[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] clarifying the TC conflict of interest rule

[Anton Khirnov]

Quoting Marton Balint (2024-02-20 20:32:19)
> 
> 
> On Tue, 20 Feb 2024, Anton Khirnov wrote:
> 
> > Quoting Marton Balint (2024-02-20 10:12:34)
> >> We have no means to prove financial interest, because it is not public.
> >
> > We also have no means to prove that committee members are acting in the
> > project's interest.
> >
> > E.g. if I had no qualms about being dishonest, I could always ask a
> > friend to object to controversial patches in my place, so I wouldn't
> > lose my vote, and nobody could prove it.
> >
> > In the end some things have to be taken on trust.
> 
> My concern is bad mouthing others based on assumed financial interest and 
> endless discussion if that interest is "serious" or not. If your payjob 
> uses ffmpeg, or if you ever want money for some ffmpeg related work, that 
> is a financial interest right there.
> 
> If somebody feels that voting would not be fair, he can always abstain. 
> I'd rather keep that fully trust based, to avoid rule interpretation 
> wars and discussions about assumed interests.
> 
> An interest is not inherently bad, selfish contributions (financial 
> reasons or not) is a huge factor in open source.

I'm deliberately phrasing it as financial interest *in a specific
outcome*, not just being paid to work on the project in general.

Also, in my updated proposal the conflict of interest is self-assessed
by the TC member in question, which I think should address these
concerns.

> >
> >> For practical reasons, using patch authorship is better. Or maybe a more
> >> general solution against bias is somewhat increasing the number of people
> >> in the TC, and removing this rule alltogether.
> >
> > I woould be concerned about making the TC too slow and unwieldy, it
> > already takes a lot of effort to push any decisions through. Keep in
> > mind that during all of its existence it only ever made two decisions,
> > and one of them spent over a year in limbo.
> 
> So with 7 people, it would have been two years? :)
> 
> Have the TC meet weekly if there is an agenda, and have votes after 
> meeting. With more people it is not that big of a deal if somebody 
> cannot attend. And have a rule in place to resolve ties. It can be as 
> simple as to accept the proposal of the party who raised the issue to the 
> TC.

Honestly, implementing this sounds like a significantly bigger project
than I want (or have the resources) to do at this point.

-- 
Anton Khirnov