FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs

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"

How could ffmpeg maintainers kill three major AWS product lines with an email?

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.

But if it gets relicensed, they would still be able to use the current version. Amazon definitely would be able to fund an independent fork.

Sounds like it would be a lot of churn for nothing; if they can fund a fork, then they could fund the original project, no?

They COULD, but history has shown they would rather start and maintain their own fork.

It might not make sense morally, but it makes total sense from a business perspective… if they are going to pay for the development, they are going to want to maintain control.