[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] STF 2025

[Thilo Borgmann]

[...]
>> * Fund administrative / maintainance work (one example is the mailman upgrade that is needed
>>   with the next OS upgrade on one of our servers (this is not as trivial as one might
>>   expect). Another example here may be some git related tools if we find something that
>>   theres a broad consensus about.
> 
> I agree that this should be paid but I would expect that STF would not be too keen on it, not that I'd know really.

We should absolutely pay for such activity and STF is very well willing 
to fund such things.


>> * Fund maintaince on the bug tracker, try to reproduce bugs, ask users to provide
>>   reproduceable cases, close bugs still unreproduceable, ...
>>   ATM we have over 2000 "new" bugs that are not even marked as open
> 
> This is a double-edged sword. If somebody gets paid to do that, then that is one more reason for others not to do it.
> 
> And again, it is completely reasonable to be paid for that, and also for code reviews and writing test cases (if we want to complete the menial task list), but I am perplexed as to STF's stance on that.

Same as above about that we should and STF would. Especially since no 
corporate interest usually pays anyone for these tasks (in case of 
reviews it might of course be considered a good thing).

The one problem to solve here AFAICT is we don't know exactly what 
quantity of bugs, reviewable code submissions and other maintenance work 
will come up in the next 12 months.
So it renders impossible to define in prior the workload, milestones and 
compensation per contributor interested as we did this year for 
well-defined tasks.

What we should consider IMO is defining the tasks (patch review, bug 
review & fix, FATE extensions, checkasm extensions, etc. as well such 
things for the administrative tasks from above) and defining a budget 
for these tasks.
Then, allow 'everyone interested' (aka git push access?) to claim a part 
of that budget every N-months, depending what the corresponding 
contributor actually did and can somehow be determined.

Regarding STF, this could visualize as one big milestone per task with a 
budget of X and this group of people working on it. How exactly the 
money distributes from there, depends on the actual work done afterwards.

However, there are many questions about the details for our side and 
probably on the STF side. We should however start with at least one of 
these tasks aiming for next year, trying to setup some process that 
would work for us and can then be aligned with what is possible with STF.


>> * Fund professional real live presence on multimedia / FOSS / buisness related
>>   events. we already refund individuals but i think we are lacking on the organizational
>>   side. We should also have on these events at least one person who can awnser developer/user
>>   questions and someone who can awnser buisness questions (on buisness related events).
>>   Also we need some eye catching things there, a big screen/projector that plays some
>>   real time filtered version from a camera. Or maybe have more people remotely be available
>>   from the FFmpeg team through real time streaming (as in, if someone wants to be on some event
>>   but cant physically go there, we could put a notebook on the table facing visitors showing
>>   something like a video chat. Also we need more cute girls on these events, everything i hear
>>   its 100% male geeks/hackers. Also a "24/7" realtime stream from any booth would be nice
> 
> This is not something that STF should pay for, AFAIU. This is something that professionals should pay out of their budget (or their employer's) for the business events, and SPI for cheap/community events, IMO.

I think we should fund all non-b2b appearances.
About b2b, I wouldn't like our donation based money to be spent. We had 
corporate sponsorship in the past not having to think about it and 
possibly will have that as well in the future. The companies are 
interested in seeing us there and some are willing to pay for that 
happening.
I think we could as well get dedicated STF money to cover such costs not 
being dependent on supportive companies and plan ahead better.

That is nothing that 'professionals' should pay out of their budget or 
should even be allowed to do as we talk about a presence for the 
open-source project, not some company's presence.

-Thilo