[FFmpeg-devel] Sovereign Tech Fund

[Jonatas L. Nogueira]

> The FFmpeg community was told about this three days ago.

Fair enough if it's true (I'm an outsider, after all)

> There are arguments in this very thread how we cannot discuss things in
> detail and must instead ACT NOW OR ALL THE MONEY IS GONE. Naturally this
> makes the mood more tense, especially given the other circumstances.

What I noticed (as an external observator), was putting the cart ahead of
the horse. There's no money right now, but STF is willing to grant around
200k if FFmpeg is able to submit a Scope of Work in time for their meeting
(happening on Feb 14th, materials however should be submitted 48 hours
before). The scope of work is, in other words, a letter of intentions of
what to do with such money. They have already informed about the
restrictions (e.g. should be maintenance or security related, that it is
too early to ask for feature projects but it might be possible in the
future, etc).

A Scope of Work is a bit more than a wishlist because it assumes the work
is actually going to be done, so it cannot be too overambitious. That's
what needs to "act now or all the money is gone". The question currently
presented is, "if FFmpeg had 200k euros to work with maintenance, what
would FFmpeg do?" ─ this will become the Scope of Work (we can have people
to word it into legalese later, if needed).

Of course, all that will end in a Statement of Work (SOW) later, describing
how the wishlist in the Scope of Work will be attained as everyone knows
that money doesn't magically solve problems. And from what I've seen as an
external observer, there is a lot of discussion pending for this. But
that's alright, there's probably over a month for that. Of course, without
a Scope of Work, there'll be no SOW, and any discussion made on this will
become a waste of time.

If I were the one doing it... I would first make a wishlist in a shared
document with all tasks eligible (3~5 days, so completion until Feb 5th
latest). There are time constraints, though, and FFmpeg takes decisions
collectively, so... I would make a vote between Feb 5th and Feb 12th (yes,
the deadline) to elect the tasks which will be on the Scope of Work. I
would improvise a bit: ask the submitted tasks to also have a proponent
(who is asking for the task to be done) and a budget (how much money the
proponent thinks that will be enough to attain it). The budget here is
nonsense, it is just to have a metric to decide how many options will go to
the Scope of Work. The proponent is to answer questions the voters may have.

With that laid out and once in motion, the remainder of discussion would be
held. How much to pay the contributors, the actual budget for the approved
projects, how it'll be tracked, what's more fair for deliverables, how
they'll be checked, if you'll contract the developers directly or with an
intermediary, etc. There's no point discussing any of that unless you're
sure the scope of work can be delivered in time. Multiple Statements of
Work are also possible, so there's no actual need for one-size-fits-all in
those questions. If project A, B and C can be divided into commits but
project D cannot, it's fine to have different rules for project D. Also why
it doesn't make much sense to hold these discussions now, when you can't
even answer what would be the projects.

That, however, is not my call. I can provide suggestions, but actually
coming with a Scope of Work in time is yours and yours alone.

> So far it does not seem we have an abundance of volunteers, so it seems
> more likely we'll struggle to spend all the money.

Coincidentally, that happens a lot. No reason to let it hinder you, though,
having money gives the option to make job postings, and you might even be
able to ask for help in spi-general list.

> only a minority of time is spent typing code.

Don't I know it... I'm also a programmer for The Mana World, pretty
familiar with "I changed a couple lines and now nothing works, spend two
hours trying to figure out that I forgot a curly brace".

That is among the discussions I believe FFmpeg should have, although you
might want to have the Scope of Work rolling before starting this. (And
there are many possible solutions, so I expect quite some time to be spent
finding all of them and picking out the best one).

If you start discussing how to properly pay for the hours spent hunting
simple typo mistakes now, you'll never be able to tell STF what actually
needs to be done in time.

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


On Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 12:17 PM Kieran Kunhya <kierank at obe.tv> wrote:

> On Wed, 31 Jan 2024 at 14:10, Jonatas L. Nogueira via ffmpeg-devel <
> ffmpeg-devel at ffmpeg.org> wrote:
>
>> > IMO hasty actions and avoidable drama may cause damage to the project
>>
>> What would be a hasty action? I've seen far too much people calling action
>> over stuff discussed for weeks/months as "hasty" in attempt to stall into
>> endless discussions, so you might want to clarify.
>>
>
> The FFmpeg community was told about this three days ago.
>
> Kieran
>