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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: 0.001s | source
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phkahler ◴[11 Nov 25 19:41 UTC] No.45891830[source]▶
From TFA this was telling:

Thus, as Mark Atwood, an open source policy expert, pointed out on Twitter, he had to keep telling Amazon to not do things that would mess up FFmpeg because, he had to keep explaining to his bosses that “They are not a vendor, there is no NDA, we have no leverage, your VP has refused to help fund them, and they could kill three major product lines tomorrow with an email. So, stop, and listen to me … ”

I agree with the headline here. If Google can pay someone to find bugs, they can pay someone to fix them. How many time have managers said "Don't come to me with problems, come with solutions"

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skrebbel ◴[11 Nov 25 19:52 UTC] No.45891966[source]▶
How could ffmpeg maintainers kill three major AWS product lines with an email?
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zxspectrum1982 ◴[11 Nov 25 19:54 UTC] No.45891984[source]▶
Easy: ffmpeg discontinues or relicenses some ffmpeg functionality that AWS depends on for those product alines and AWS is screwed. I've seen that happen in other open source projects.
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astrange ◴[11 Nov 25 23:30 UTC] No.45894363[source]▶
ffmpeg cannot relicense anything because it doesn't own anything. The contributors own the license to their code.
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1. colonwqbang ◴[12 Nov 25 00:15 UTC] No.45894733[source]▶
Relicensing isn't necessary. If you violate the GPL with respect to a work you automatically lose your license to that work.

It's enough if one or two main contributors assert their copyrights. Their contributions are so tangled with everything else after years of development that it can't meaningfully be separated away.

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2. pabs3 ◴[12 Nov 25 02:55 UTC] No.45895919[source]▶
In addition, there is the potential for software users to sue for GPL compliance. At least that is the theory behind the lawsuit against Vizio:

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

3. aydyn ◴[12 Nov 25 05:55 UTC] No.45896791[source]▶
But that's only relevant if AWS (in this example) violates the GPL license, and it doesn't really seem like they have?