[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] swscale: Do not misuse HAVE_* flags.

[Stefano Sabatini]

On date Saturday 2009-07-25 10:17:23 +0200, Michael Niedermayer encoded:
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 03:01:22AM -0300, Ramiro Polla wrote:
[...]
> > I read in an old thread you said you would not review MMX rewrites
> > [0]. In my previous reply to this thread I was still under the
> > impression that swscale MMX code was mostly written by other people
> > (like the libmpeg2 folks) and that's why it was GPL. I'm sorry if my
> > reasoning for the patch made it sound like I wanted to encourage
> > rewrites of your code. I just want (L)GPL code to be easily
> > selectable, and with the current if(!GPL) disable MMX approach it's
> > impossible. IIRC Kostya has been writing swscale code under LGPL, and
> > we already have some LGPL MMX optimization [1] which is not being
> > compiled in LGPL builds.
> 
> I dont mind to have the existing LGPL code enabled but i would
> prefer if some of thouse many companies using ffmpeg and who would
> benefit from LGPL sws would pay the GPL authors to relicense it
> instead of more being rewritten by some of us for free.
> 
> This world is nasty, the supermarkets around here _do_ charge money
> for the food, and ISP, electricity, ... aint free either.
> Maybe i should get a job, iam not particularely short on offers but
> that wouldnt help ffmpeg as i would likely have significantly less
> time for it ...
> I hope people understand now why iam annoyed by a sws LGPL rewrite,
> iam simply seeing the possibility of covering some past expenses.
> Outside of that i dont really care if my code is GPL or LGPL, i
> might slightly prefer GPL but thats not a big thing ...
> 
> To summarize it again
> A. some of us working for free to please companies who dont pay us
>    ->we also have less time for other things and we do need to pay
>      food,ISP,appartment,electricity,failed computer components,...
>      that occur during that time
> B. receiving some money and simply relicensing to LGPL
> 
> Writing FOSS is supposed to be a fun thing and working for free for
> someone who does make money of ones work but donates none of it isnt
> fun IMHO.
> The way it should be is IMHO
> * we write code we like under a license we like not write what some
>   rich company wants so they can fill their pockets even more ...
> 
> In that sense i also think it would be nice if companies who have
> money would donate some to the devel who fixed a bug for them that
> they wanted fixed.
> As a sideeffect that might (though noone can know for sure of course)
> have a positive effect on the amount of bugs that are open...

We could add a Bounty section to our web site, maybe we could even
change the bugtracker to mark bug reports / feature requests which
have an offer in $$, part of that money could go to the fixer and part
to the organization / maintainer.

I have no experience on this field, so I can't say how hard that would
be especially from the legal / fiscal / point of view, also I wonder
how much that would work from the economical point of view.

Also when money is involved things tend to get nasty, and that could
issue frictions between devs, that's maybe a necessary evil if we
want to continue to have a dedicated person to the project.

Regards.
-- 
FFmpeg = Fantastic and Free Mind-dumbing Portable Eretic Gadget