FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs

"They could shut down three product lines with an email"

If you (Amazon, in this case) can put it that way, it seems like throwing them 10 or 20 thousand a year would simply be a good insurance policy! Any benefits you might get in goodwill and influence are a bonus.

How do you think Jeff got a 500 million dollars yacht? Not by writing checks.

But on a more serious note, it is crazy that between Google and Amazon they can not fund them with 50k each per year, so that they can pay people to work on this.

Specially Google, with Youtube, they can very easily pay them more. 100k~200k easily.

If I had built up 500 million in a savings account to buy a yacht, giving 50k of that to FFmpeg devs would put off my ability to buy a yacht by nearly a whole day.

Boltzmann brain-wise it clearly doesn't make sense to wait that long.