[FFmpeg-devel] Discussion about mails from 9 years ago Was: [PATCH 1/2] doc/community: Add a standard set of rules for software development mailing lists

[Michael Niedermayer]

Hi Kieran

I think this is off topic for this thread, but i will reply with adjusted
Subject and as a new thread

On Sun, Nov 24, 2024 at 02:58:29PM +0000, Kieran Kunhya via ffmpeg-devel wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 24, 2024 at 12:23 PM Michael Niedermayer
[...]
> "In the email at the URL you provided
> (https://ffmpeg.org//pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2015-July/176489.html),
> Michael Niedermayer states:
>
> Root admin roles:
> I will keep the server root admin role until there is an agreement who
> should have it that is acceptable for the ffmpeg and libav
> communities.
> This confirms that Michael Niedermayer agrees to give root access of
> the FFmpeg project to whomever both the FFmpeg and Libav communities
> agree should have it."

This is a very long time ago. And at the time i believed everyone would
join and work together and that all hostilities where over.
Yes i guess i was naive. (Or maybe i was thinking something else, its
9 years ago, who knows)

Now reality is, Paul (the 2nd most active developer of all time) was bullied
out of FFmpeg. In private mail he spoke about being treated like a slave.

And in the last 3 weeks, alot of hostilities have hit me, so i kind of
feel a little like Paul maybe felt.

Then theres Nicolas who people kept making snide remarks on IRC and who
also reduced in activity alot.

Theres Thilo who besides spending time in hospital a year or two ago
was accused of all kinds of things, in some recent mail the author himself
used the phrase "I accept this may be slander"
The hostilities even prior to this caused thilo to avoid posting to the
mailing list. (for which he then was accused even more)

There are multiple people who where once at the VDD and do not want to
go there again. And ill be clear here i keep telling everyone, "please
go to vdd"

There where also serious accusations against some people in private
(I cant make these public, i was mostly just on the CC)

And there where many more people who left after some collision with other community
members over the years. (I cannot name them because they never spoke
up in public and in some cases iam only 99% sure of the reasons)

Also you might wonder why carl is not employed by FFlabs, as he was
very important to FFmpeg, kept track of every bug on the bug tracker
and so on. Yes iam also curious, it was requested by multiple people
to FFlabs to hire him.

less than 2 weeks ago the founder was insulted like this:
"Fabrice's control of ffmpeg.org and French trademark, despite not havign contributed
 in 20 years, purely for ego reasons mean we can never move to a truly community run set or project infra."

And we can probably go on and on.
On top of this i would not be surprised if other people have similar stories
from yet others they spoke with.

So, the project community is not healthy.

My original intend was to at some point hand power over to someone choosen
by a healthy community of people who respect each other and mostly pull on
the same string in the same direction. That is i envissioned a community
which grew and i become unneeded and would simply pass powers on to someone
from that community.
Similar to fabrice leaving once ffmpeg had grown enough to self sustain.
(and passing power over to me)

But what i see is infighting, i see people permanently leaving because of
hostilities. I see slander, i see trolling, i see hatred, I see
people playing social tricks to screw others over. I see people
finger pointing at others who are trying to solve problems instead
of supporting them.

Also we now have the commercial interrests like FFlabs. Which are important
to pay developers. But i also am quite concerned that power over FFmpeg could
fall into the hands of some commercial company.
FFmpeg should stay a community led project and i will not hand power over to
commercial entities. (this may have been misinterpreted in some other thread)

And i hear almost everyone at VDD are old man. FFmpeg cannot be run by
just old man. There is a need for young people and need for new ideas.

On top of that, iam really not an "active root admin", work is done
by timo and raz mostly. And they do it well and are professional.

Now the community seems to wants to add someone from "them" to root. And
i dont know what that even means. And that
exactly reflects back to what i was writing above. This sort of split
where theres 2 sides. You know Timo and Raz are part of the community
Timo is a GA member, he has 27 commits this year and a commit this
months. He is listed 8 times in MAINTAINERS.
I also have like 29 thousand commits in FFmpeg.

It seems each VDD event re-enforces the community feeling amongth the people
who meet and at the same time seperation to everyone who does not go there.
Then the people come and demand things are handed over to them. Last year
the domain name, this year root access.
Not realizing that the domain is held by the founder who belongs to the
community, not realizing most of the root admins are active members of
the community.
Really root powers have already been delegated to raz long ago and timo
not so long ago.
I have also removed myself from "project server emergencies" in MAINTAINERS on "Aug 6th 2022"
thats over 2 years ago. Because we have more qualified people for that
now.

Thx
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not
or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and
the brevity of human life -- Protagoras
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