[FFmpeg-devel] Sovereign Tech Fund

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le maanantaina 29. tammikuuta 2024, 20.11.19 EET Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
> > The "drama" is about how and through whom the funding goes.
> 
> ok, elaborate please
> 
> All FFmpeg money has always been handled through SPI or associated entities

It was already a bit of a stretch to compare GSoC students with (hypothetical) 
STF subcontractors. So sorry but I simply don't think that the funding for 
mentors is comparable at all. In fact, it seems completely normal for the GSoC 
mentor funding to go via open-source foundations, and other GSoC projects 
presumably operate the same way.

> Its under the control of the community and its transparent

You always have the control of the community at the time of review and merge.

You can argue all you want that more open is better. What I see is that this 
more open is already turning into a train wreck (as predicted last year).

> And very important what do you propose ?

We already went through this in the previous thread last year. This is not 
going to work in the light of what Jonatas politely calls FFmpeg "governance" 
challenges. It was already clear that finding agreement within the GA would be 
at best very difficult and untimely.

People (including myself) already suggested to arrange that sort of things via 
an IT service company (*not* necessarily FFlabs). Or you could even go through 
a "porting" company in your country if you can't find an existing agreeable 
company and don't want to register your own. Of course those are not perfect 
solutions but they seem far less fraught with problems than going through a 
foundation, especially a US-based foundation. You can review the archives for 
details.

And it certainly does not help that this only became public so late in the 
process, which is intrinsically suspicious.

> Should we reject the maybe 200k € grant we could get from STF now ?

Again, nobody objected to getting funding from STF as such.

> > That drama
> > couldn't be had for GSoC because how was however Google decides, and there
> > was no intermediary to go through (money went straight from Google to the
> > students).
> 
> SPI handles all the GSoC mentor money.
> And lets just assume it would handle the students money too, what difference
> would that really make ?

It would cause similar arguments to this one. And that's if Google would even 
agree to such a setup (which I guess they wouldn't).

What is the point of going through SPI for *this* (as opposed to regular 
donations)?

-- 
レミ・デニ-クールモン
http://www.remlab.net/