[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] financial sustainability Plan A (SPI)

[Michael Niedermayer]

On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 06:37:58PM +0100, Hendrik Leppkes wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 6:31 PM Michael Niedermayer
> <michael at niedermayer.cc> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 07:19:41PM +0200, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> > > Le tiistaina 31. lokakuuta 2023, 18.58.57 EET Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
> > > > > That's not a credible solution for a library. All reverse dependency
> > > > > developers would disable that before they ship affected FFmpeg versions,
> > > > > or worse, just stop updating their vendored FFmpeg.
> > > >
> > > > If its announced and we point to the commit, maybe half the minor users
> > > > will remove it, maybe most of the bigger ones. If its not announced
> > > > noone would remove it. companies do not audit the FFmpeg commits.
> > > > They would remove it after seeing it but at that point it did what it
> > > > intended to to, inform users again, like i said thats hypothetical and
> > > > controversal. But basically doing the same as companies which put
> > > > advertisements in without asking either creator nor viewer.
> > >
> > > How do you show ads without a GUI? Hijack the video signal from the decoder?
> >
> > In this very very hypothetical idea ...
> > it would not be a add, but a simple information box shown briefly that says
> > something like "decoded with ffmpeg.org, donate if you enjoy" / "encoded with ffmpeg.org, donate if you enjoy"
> >
> 
> If as a professional user of a decoder library, it starts putting in
> an ad or a watermark or whatever you want to call it, even if briefly,
> i'm looking for a new decoder library, or will venture to remove the
> message instantly.
> And if that wasn't enough to completely destroy the projects
> reputation, if you then try to hide it by randomizing or whatever, so
> that testing before deployment doesn't see it, that definitely will.
> 
> This is not acceptable behavior for a decoder. And no "exposure" due

like i said, its a hypothetical and controversal thought experiment


> to bad press will actually yield you a benefit.

> Companies won't pay
> you, because that doesn't get rid of the message.

That misses the goal, the goal of this was to reach some of the more than
1 billion users we have and who do not know they are using FFmpeg.


> They'll pay an
> engineer to disable it.

it would just show up once lets say on a specific day 1 year after the code
is added. we would remove it on that day ourselfs.
It would just be a simple one time shown message that says
"Decoded by ffmpeg.org / Please donate, if you enjoy"

thx

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Ignorance,
they as if into a greater darkness enter who devote themselves
to the Knowledge alone. -- Isha Upanishad
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 195 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/attachments/20231031/29ab68aa/attachment.sig>