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Microsoft opens a "high priority" bug ticket in ffmpeg, attempting to leech the free labour of the maintainers (trac.ffmpeg.org)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Sibbo@sopuli.xyz to c/programming@programming.dev

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Microsoft employee:

Hi, This is a high priority ticket and the FFmpeg version is currently used in a highly visible product in Microsoft. We have customers experience issues with Caption during Teams Live Event. Please help

Maintainer's comment on twitter:

After politely requesting a support contract from Microsoft for long term maintenance, they offered a one-time payment of a few thousand dollars instead.

This is unacceptable.

And further:

The lesson from the xz fiasco is that investments in maintenance and sustainability are unsexy and probably won't get a middle manager their promotion but pay off a thousandfold over many years.

But try selling that to a bean counter

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[+] lysdexic@programming.dev -6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It’s not that they made a big report. It’s that they, a multi-billion dollar company,

Why do you think this is even relevant? Again, does your attitude towards a run of the mill ticket change if you change who filed it? Why are you outraged because some random grunt from company A or B filed an issue instead of random joe X? Would you be commenting here if the very same person who filed the issue had done so with a personal account without identifying or disclosing their employer?

It’s that they do nothing for the project but expect the world from it.

I'm sorry, where does ffmpeg demand contributions or retributions from anyone who downloads or distributes their project? Aren't they explicitly distributing their work without asking anyone to do or give anything in return? I mean, isn't that the whole point of FLOSS?

More surprisingly, we see guides on how to contribute to FLOSS projects which state in no uncertain terms that filing bug reports and even run exploratory tests to give feedback to maintainers counts as contributing to the project, but somehow you've flipped over even the core principles to make it sound like a cash grab.

[–] bane_killgrind@lemmy.ml 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You are right, nothing is relevant except bootlicking corps

[–] lysdexic@programming.dev -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is really not about "corps".

You eager-to-be-outraged types are desperately trying to make a storm in a tea cup over a normal bug report filed among hundreds of bug reports.

Again, if you replaced the name of those filing the bug report with "random joe", would you still have faked all this outrage? Would you throw the same tantrum if it was even any other business?

[–] bane_killgrind@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago

I'm not outraged, I'm telling you "Your position that they are acting normally, or ethically, or optimally or whatever your position is, is dumb."