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Microsoft opens a "high priority" bug ticket in ffmpeg, attempting to leech the free labour of the maintainers (trac.ffmpeg.org)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Microsoft employee:

Hi, This is a high priority ticket and the FFmpeg version is currently used in a highly visible product in Microsoft. We have customers experience issues with Caption during Teams Live Event. Please help

Maintainer's comment on twitter:

After politely requesting a support contract from Microsoft for long term maintenance, they offered a one-time payment of a few thousand dollars instead.

This is unacceptable.

And further:

The lesson from the xz fiasco is that investments in maintenance and sustainability are unsexy and probably won't get a middle manager their promotion but pay off a thousandfold over many years.

But try selling that to a bean counter

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They offered a few thousand dollars, but not a long term contract.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

That’s fine, but long term maintenance is the main pain for FOSS projects. I am not sure what’s the right protocol here, though. In general, maybe FOSS projects should start a subscription service for big time companies like MSFT. Why not?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Companies like Suse, redhat, gruntworks, etc etc all offer stuff like that. There is a clear model here. I think libs get little live because contracts are a lot if work so the smaller the contract the less it makes sense (to the people writing contracts).

Maybe open source coop that sells support contracts for libs in bulk deals in the same a farmer coop sells bulk crops from famers all around an area.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I'm honestly in favor of something like that, but when people are saying SSPL isn't FOSS because it supposedly discriminates against different classes of users, we won't get the momentum for people to view any sort of "FOSS except for commercial" license as valid or worth using.

Some such licenses exist (not saying they're good or anything). PolyForm Noncommercial and PolyForm Small Business are two examples https://polyformproject.org/licenses/