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FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs

(thenewstack.io)
1125 points CrankyBear | 4 comments | 11 Nov 25 18:32 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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profsummergig ◴[11 Nov 25 19:14 UTC] No.45891496[source]▶
A bunch of people who make era-defining software for free. A labor of love.

Another bunch of people who make era-defining software where they extract everything they can. From customers, transactionally. From the first bunch, pure extraction (slavery, anyone?).

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ivell ◴[11 Nov 25 19:20 UTC] No.45891584[source]▶
Irrespective of what Google does, security research is still useful for all of us.

They could adopt a more flexible policy for FOSS though.

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doctorwho42 ◴[11 Nov 25 19:40 UTC] No.45891820[source]▶
Or they could contribute solutions to said bugs? Its not like they would distract that much from their bottom line
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1. SR2Z ◴[11 Nov 25 20:49 UTC] No.45892635[source]▶
Google is a major contributor to open-source video, to the point where it would not be viable without them.
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2. SR2Z ◴[11 Nov 25 22:43 UTC] No.45893912[source]▶
Look, I know you're being snarky, but YES. All of the viable open-source video codecs of the past 10 years would not have happened without Google. Not just for technical reasons, but for expensive patent-related legal reasons too.

Given that ffmpeg is an open-source video transcoding tool, I don't think you can easily just dismiss this as "big company abuses open source."

The ffmpeg devs are volunteers or paid to work on specific parts of the tool. That's why they're unimpressed. What Google is doing here is pretty reasonable.

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3. xgulfie ◴[12 Nov 25 01:11 UTC] No.45895238{3}[source]▶
I don't think ffmpeg is terribly affected by whether a codec is patent-encumbered or not
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4. SR2Z ◴[12 Nov 25 12:12 UTC] No.45899203{4}[source]▶
It would certainly be a less useful tool if all the videos it produced got you legal threats every time you tried to share them :)