[FFmpeg-devel] Democratization

Rémi Denis-Courmont remi at remlab.net
Thu Jan 2 20:49:31 EET 2025


Le torstaina 2. tammikuuta 2025, 20.10.31 UTC+2 Michael Niedermayer a écrit :
> Let me provide several independant arguments here.
> 
> in the GA system
> someone spending 2 days to submit 20 patches and not caring about FFmpeg has
> 1 vote

Someone who does not care about FFmpeg will not use their vote, so that's a 
non-issue.

> someone spending the last 20 years working every day on FFmpeg and
> authroing over 20000 commits has 1 vote

So what? I pay far more taxes than most people do, and yet I don't have more 
voting power than other people. (In fact, I don't even have the right to vote 
for parliament or president at all.)

Your proposal is anything but democratic and seems to only make the situation 
worse for anyone but you and your steadfast supporters.
 
> A.  this is not fair
> B1.  It is exploitable, the 2nd man could just submit 200 commits each under
> 100 pseudonyms to receive 100 votes

That's a false dichotomy. The argument is not that the current system is good. 
The argument is that this proposal is worse.

Or as per the famous quote from a certain dead politician, "no one pretends 
that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy 
is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have 
been tried from time to time.…"

> B2.  It is exploitable, anyone can just hire 20 developers on fiver and
>      have them sign NDAs and for less than maybe 20k $ get 20 votes, these
> are fully KYC-able, they can even travel to a meeting, they are real people
> payed to do some work in FFmpeg, not distingishable from others who
> currently work on ffmpeg for money.

By all means, require identification to obtain any kind of voting rights at a 
face-to-face meeting if you are concerned about fake identities. Needless to 
say, that that will require coming to an actual meeting at least once...

> In fact the current developers already
> WILL TODAY vote the way their employer wants them to

We are not interested in more conspiracy theories bordering on slander.

Besides, it is obvious from the rest that the true purpose of your proposal is 
for you to monopolise power and avoid accountability. Opinions will vary on 
whether that's a good or a bad thing. But for sure, it is anything but 
democratic or what the people pushing for more democracy want.

-- 
雷米‧德尼-库尔蒙
http://www.remlab.net/





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