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FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs

(thenewstack.io)
1125 points CrankyBear | 1 comments | 11 Nov 25 18:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | 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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1. loodish ◴[12 Nov 25 12:14 UTC] No.45899217[source]▶
If you breach the LGPLv2/GPLv2 licence then you lose all rights to use the software.

There's no penalty clause, there's no recovery clause. If you don't comply with the licence conditions then you don't have a licence. If you don't have a licence then you can't use the program, any version of the program. And if your products depend on that program then you lose your products.

The theoretical email would be a notification that they had breached the licence and could no longer use the software. The obvious implication being that AWS was wanting to do something that went contrary to the restrictions in the GPL, and he was trying to convince them not to.