[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH 2/3] libavcodec: add NETINT Quadra HW decoders & encoders

[Marton Balint]

On Tue, 8 Jul 2025, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Jul 7, 2025 at 9:00 PM Desmond Liu <desmond.liu at netint.ca> wrote:
>
>>   *   As far as I know, these cards/units are not available to the general
>> public at all.
>>
>> The cards are available to the general public. See
>> https://netint.com/contact-us and send a message to sales at netint.com
>> <mailto:sales at netint.com>. There is no minimum order nor any NDA that
>> needs to be signed.
>
>
> We previously had a similar debate regarding realmedia (search for "Codec
> wrapper for librv11 and RMHD muxer/demuxer").
>
> The debate comes down to this:
> - it's clear that for the company, there's a huge advantage in patches
> being upstream. For example, upstream does maintenance/upkeep for free.
> - it's not clear whether there is any benefit to the community / project in
> this patch being upstream. For example, how do we test this code in fate?

The same way you would test other hardware with fate, fate is really not 
the issue.

> The fact that something is for sale does not mean it's a general benefit to
> the FFmpeg developer or user community.

How is this different from merging hardware support to the upstream linux 
kernel? Do we really *not want* companies making money from ffmpeg forks 
to try to upstream their changes and have an interest in fixing issues or 
adding features to the vanilla version?

Regards,
Marton