Post
FFmpeg to Google Fund Us or Stop Sending Bugs: https://thenewstack.io/ffmpeg-to-google-fund-us-or-stop-sending-bugs/ by @sjvn
The clash between small volunteer-driven, open-source projects, such as FFmpeg & the billion-dollar companies built on their work, which demand rapid security patches, is heating up.
@sjvn Yeah this sucks. I made a summary of this article.
Wonder if FFmpeg can do to Google what Pantone did to Adobe?
https://www.wired.com/story/adobe-pantone-color-subscription-fee/
https://www.userlandia.com/home/2022/11/adobe-pantone-faq
https://www.nsymbio.com/2023/07/06/adobe-drops-pantone/
Or form an evil axis alliance elsewhere
https://news.microsoft.com/source/2025/11/05/pantone-and-microsoft-unite-to-enhance-creative-exploration-through-ai/
https://www.fastcompany.com/91435187/pantone-color-generator-ai-tool
@sjvn Will Google create a fake community poll like they did with XSLT and try to replace this too?
@sjvn I feel it would be appropriate that companies as powerful as Google (or indeed any commercial "customers") should deliver an OSS bug report together with a suggested patch, in the coding style of the project concerned and tested.
@sjvn This is the kind of shit that "Free for everyone except if you make more than $1M" type of licenses try fix.
I guess people have an ideology to defend when they don't support 100% free software, but corpos don't care.
Next FFmpeg release should have that kind of licensing.
@sjvn Now look here- big tech didn't lay all these people off just so it could fund open source!
@sjvn this is actually very simple to solve:
This something an increasing number of #FLOSS projects do: Rejecting submissions of non-allowlisted users without a valid #SupportSubscription at time of submission!
Anything else is just being a rich asshole corporation leeching!
@sjvn
Just like people pay for the SLA of their #FireBrigade via #taxation and the #FireInsurance which has to cough up the cost of Firefighter Deployments in case of a Fire.
@sjvn Hey, I've got the source. Send me a PR to resolve, and a check for $10,000, and I'm happy to help.
@sjvn, in what way are they sending bugs? Are they causing faulty commits to be made, or something?
Stupid journalistic error. This is about bug reports, not bugs.
@sjvn fuck this. If Google won't donate, I will. I just did, in fact.
US corporations with billions of dollars of investment by petrostate despots
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/07/heres-a-look-at-who.html
Very keen on forever unpaid labor.
https://digit-research.org/blog/unpaid-work-and-the-case-of-open-source-labour/
https://www.promarket.org/2024/10/08/how-cultural-norms-help-companies-exploit-unpaid-workers/
https://www.weizenbaum-institut.de/news/detail/theory-on-the-politics-of-unpaid-labour/
Social media platforms; unpaid content "voluntarily" donated to billionaires Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, & Larry Ellison.
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/videos/unpaid-labour-in-the-platform-economy-a-typology-of-wage-theft-in-the-digital-age/
Unpaid media moderators
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/05/unpaid-social-media-moderators
https://cornellresearch.medium.com/dream-work-unpaid-labor-in-the-gig-economy-4926e673bec5
@sjvn "Google provides more assistance to open source software projects than almost any other organization, and these debates are more likely to drive away potential sponsors than to attract them."
Why are you still here, Google?
@sjvn add more bugs that specifically break Google’s systems and nothing else
they are just going to buy them and corrupt them.
@sjvn I think it's unclear what's preventing ffmpeg devs from just ignoring these bug reports.
Like, if GPZ were to publish the details of an unfixed vuln in a rarely-used feature of ffmpeg, there shouldn't be much impact on real users, most of the pain would be with the CVE-obsessed corpos that use ffmpeg in their products, right?
@sjvn sometimes, in my personal projects, when someone acts like I owe them something by virtue of having made and published the project, I do this:
https://github.com/grishka/NearDrop/issues/198
@Antacon @grishka @sjvn shit like this is why I see more projects than ever limiting issue submissions to support subscribers only...
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