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?

In a follow-up tweet, Mark Atwood eloborates: "Amazon was very carefully complying with the licenses on FFmpeg. One of my jobs there was to make sure the company was doing so. Continuing to make sure the company was was often the reason I was having a meeting like that inside the company."

I interpret this as meaning there was an implied "if you screw this up" at the end of "they could kill three major product lines with an email."

Are you interpreting that as "if we violate the license, they can revoke our right to use the software" ?? And they use it in 3 products so that would be really bad. That would make sense to have a compliance person.