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FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs

(thenewstack.io)
1125 points CrankyBear | 2 comments | 11 Nov 25 18:32 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bogwog ◴[11 Nov 25 20:00 UTC] No.45892050[source]▶
Is it time for FFmpeg to relicense as AGPL? That'd be fun to witness.
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PeaceTed ◴[11 Nov 25 20:23 UTC] No.45892335[source]▶
Watch places like Amazon and Google suddenly stop updating and trying to find alternatives.

Like how Apple stopped using up to date the GNU tools in 2008 because of GPL3. That moved showed me then that Apple did not want you to use your computer as your computer.

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1. isr ◴[11 Nov 25 20:51 UTC] No.45892663[source]▶
Well, to continue that timeline. "Big Tech" freezes their version to the last gpl'ed version, and each commences their own (non-trivial effort) to make their own version (assuming the last gpl'ed version was not feature-complete for all their future uses).

And of course, they won't share with each other. So another driver would be fear of a slight competitive disadvantage vs other-big-tech-monstrosity having a better version.

Now, in this scenario, some tech CEO, somewhere has this brilliant bright spark.

"Hey, instead of dumping all these manhours & resources into DIYing it, with no guarantee that we still won't be left behind - why don't we just throw 100k at the original oss project. We'll milk the publicity, and ... we won't have to do the work, and ... my competitors won't be able to use it"

I quite like this scenario.

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2. halapro ◴[12 Nov 25 07:12 UTC] No.45897203[source]▶
Imagine Google paying only 100k to ffmpeg though. That's like a single 3-month top-SWE pay at Google.