[FFmpeg-devel] Sovereign Tech Fund

[Jonatas L. Nogueira]

Anton: "whether anything requires the projects to be owned by
individuals"... I don't think so. At least, not from the SPI side, STF
might have objections which I cannot anticipate.

But from the SPI side, we probably could do a MSA/SOW with a company rather
than individuals just fine, although I would still have to check with the
attorney though as our MSA and SOW are optimized for individuals. As long
as the final price is something  that SPI, STF, IRS, and Bundestag can
agree with and the job is within the scope of work, that is.

In such case, STF would transfer money to SPI, SPI would sign a SOW with
FFlabs, FFlabs would hire you (this has some implications, like FFlabs
owning the code), then FFlabs would report completion to SPI, SPI would
check if the complete work is according the SOW (peer-review + liaison
approval/veto), and if everything is good, SPI would pay FFlabs.

With individuals: STF would transfer money to SPI, SPI would sign a SOW
with every developer, then the developer would report completion to SPI,
SPI would check if the complete work is according the SOW (peer-review +
liaison approval/veto), and if everything is good, SPI would pay the
developer directly.



Note 1: Please don't forget that the idea of the currently discussed grant,
as I understand it, is maintenance and security work, not projects, so
while one would need the finished Scope of Work to be sure, I don't expect
#1 (pre-approval) to be an actual issue.

Note 2: Doing this with a company is usually more expensive than
contracting with the devs directly, so as I said, you would need to check
with STF, and just like SPI won't pay for developers without the
deliverables, same apply to a company (where the company could still need
to pay the developers anyway).

Note 3: What you need more urgently is the Scope of Work. From what you
said, you might even want the GA to vote on it, and if you take a whole
week for it as advised in your FAQ, then you need it done even earlier, by
February 5th, giving you exactly a week to finish this.
There are several potential solutions for the other issues, including
practical ones like e.g. a document from the General Assembly making an
incomplete MR/PR equivalent to a commit, or impractical ones like e.g.
requiring all contractors to record their screens while doing the tasks and
sending the low-res video to confirm they work, but none of them matter if
the Scope of Work cannot be finished in time.

Note 4: I am an outsider, external to FFmpeg ─ my goal here is to answer
questions and support you in securing the funding. I'm not paid by SPI to
do this, my time is not infinite and the time I can spare is not exclusive
for FFmpeg but has to be shared among all the 42 SPI associated projects,
so I would highly appreciate if you could be topical, that is, leave "dirty
laundry", votes of no-confidence and such to the Community Committee and
keep here only the immediately relevant part for getting the sponsorship
unblocked (e.g. "The Technical Committee should send a list of contested
commits and SPI should delay payment over those until the TC issues a
decision"). Offtopic not only derails but wastes everyone's time.

Would it help if I set up a shared Google Docs? I'm here to answer
questions, but if you're in need of support of any kind just ask. I'm
honestly rooting for FFmpeg to succeed, after all, even if it doesn't
matter much for SPI if you decide you are better off without funding,
maintaining your code or hiring help for security tasks.

--
Jonatas L. Nogueira (“jesusalva”)
Board of Directors Member
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.


On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 6:11 PM Anton Khirnov <anton at khirnov.net> wrote:

> Quoting Michael Niedermayer (2024-01-28 04:25:49)
> > There can be no late objections here to any project suggestions.
> > Objections must be before a project suggestion is submitted to STF,
> > objections after that cannot be considered!
>
> Self-imposed restrictions like these at the very least need a GA vote
> IMO.
>
> > Also once the person doing the work reaches the agreed milestone.
> > She will submit an invoice with stefano and my help to SPI/STF.
> > (in the unlikely case of a dispute on reaching a milestone
> >  it would be decided by the technical committee if the milestone
> >  has been reached from FFmpegs point of view)
>
> Unlikely? I believe you are overlooking and/or trivializing the most
> serious problems that need to be addressed before we can submit any
> applications and not have it end in disaster.
>
> These are, IMO:
>
> 1) How does the project protect itself from pre-approving some code that
>    does not exist yet? This is not just some theoretical danger, it's
>    easily possible that some project sounds good in theory, but actually
>    implementing it comes with so many gotchas and caveats that it ends
>    up being not worth it. Or there are fundamental technical
>    disagreements about the specific way it's been implemented. Both
>    cases exist in our history.
>
> 2) How do developers protect themselves from spending vast amounts of
>    time on work they may not get paid for? As per 1), we may easily run
>    into fundamental technical disagreements which result in the work
>    having to be scrapped or redone entirely.
>
>    It's also very hard to accurately estimate the amount of work
>    required to do something. What do we do when someone spends a month
>    working before realizing the project needs 5x more time than it's
>    budgeted for?
>
> 3) Who exactly will be judging what amount of money is appropriate for
>    what amount of work performed? How will we avoid conflicts of
>    interest, or endless bikesheds over who is getting too much money for
>    too little work? We just bikeshud a thread to death over rather
>    little money, now imagine what would happen with ten times the
>    amount.
>
> Contrary to the overall mood of this thread so far, I hope these issues
> can be overcome and some useful work sponsored successfully. But they
> need to be taken seriously first.
>
> I'd also like to ask Jonatas whether anything requires the projects to
> be owned by individuals. Were I to propose a project, I'd much rather it
> went through FFlabs than myself individually.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Anton Khirnov
>