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FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs

(thenewstack.io)
1125 points CrankyBear | 3 comments | 11 Nov 25 18:32 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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ironman1478 ◴[11 Nov 25 20:00 UTC] No.45892049[source]▶
Never work for free. It's a complete market distortion and leads to bad actors taking advantage of you and your work.
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1. shevy-java ◴[11 Nov 25 20:53 UTC] No.45892682[source]▶
That's fine. Are they required to work for Google? I mean, they are independent and can decide on their own.
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2. ironman1478 ◴[12 Nov 25 01:29 UTC] No.45895362[source]▶
Corporations extract a ton of value from projects like ffmpeg. They can either pay an employee to fix the issues or setup some sort of contract with members of the community to fix bugs or make feature enhancements.

There is precedent for this: https://sqlite.org/consortium.html

3. tombert ◴[12 Nov 25 03:21 UTC] No.45896073[source]▶
Nearly everyone here probably knows someone who has done free labor and "worked for exposure", and most people acknowledge that this is a scam, and we don't have a huge issue condemning the people running the scam. I've known people who have done free art commissions because of this stuff, and this "exposure" never translated to money.

Are the people who got scammed into "working for exposure" required to work for those people?

No, of course not, no one held a gun to their head, but it's still kind of crappy. The influencers that are "paying in exposure" are taking advantage of power dynamics and giving vague false promises of success in order to avoid paying for shit that they really should be paying for.