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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 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 71 points 3 months ago (74 children)

Can someone enlighten me why a one-time payment of a few thousand for a bugfix is unacceptable? I feel like I'm missing something.

[–] [email protected] 122 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (54 children)

I think the maintainer just viewed the bug report as tone deaf. Microsoft is a trillion dollar company and apparently relying on this library without a support contract. Then they a open a high priority bug item. The maintainer saying it's unacceptable is them basically saying they won't prioritize any work unless there's an existing support contract and that they don't do one off payments for bug fixes, which I think is fair.

[+] [email protected] -67 points 3 months ago (53 children)

I think the maintainer just viewed the bug report as tone deaf. Microsoft is a trillion dollar company and apparently relying on this library without a support contract.

I think this mentality shows a clear dissonance between how maintainers are licensing their software and what are their expectations in terms of retribution from users of their software.

If they release a software package with a license that explicitly states that they allow the whole world to use it freely without any expectation if return, they cannot complain afterwards that some particular people in the world end up using it.

Likewise for bug reports.

If they want to get paid because the software they have been releasing to be used freely by everyone is being used freely by a specific company then they need to get their shit together and release it under a license where they explicitly state their terms. This is crítical for everyone involved, specially end users, because we need clarity on these terms.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It's one thing to just use the software, it's another to open bug tickets that you expect the maintainer to prioritise. It's free software, the maintainer doesn't have to do anything for you. If they want tickets fixed with high priority, they should work something out with the maintainer.

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