[FFmpeg-devel] Sovereign Tech Fund

[Michael Niedermayer]

Hi

On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 11:01:05PM +0200, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> Le maanantaina 29. tammikuuta 2024, 20.11.19 EET Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
[...]
> > 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).

I do have to disagree on this specific point
The people predicting it to be a train wreck are the people who now make it
a train wreck.


> 
> > 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.

Of course we can discuss this and vote on it. Personally i believe SPI is a good choice.
And especially a safe choice. And it will be difficult to find a choice that
doesnt have some agenda and does this for free.

SPI has served many open source projects over a long time.
Adding an entity that handles FFmpegs finanaces needs to be done carefully
It should not be a newly formed entity and it should not be an entity
related to multimedia.
So for example a >10 year old entity that is truted by many diverse open source
projects. (like SPI)

But either way that would not be a quick process
finding an entity that everyone trusts wouĺd not be easy. So i still suggest we
go with SPI even for future STF rounds


[...]
> > > 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)?

iam not 100% sure i understand your question.
Our donations are handled by SPI and
STF will not pay developers directly, this is not an option. This was asked early

thx

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

The real ebay dictionary, page 2
"100% positive feedback" - "All either got their money back or didnt complain"
"Best seller ever, very honest" - "Seller refunded buyer after failed scam"
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