[Ffmpeg-devel] Using ffmpeg libs in an OSS project is a nightmare

Diego Biurrun diego
Sun Aug 7 04:37:46 CEST 2005


On Sun, Aug 07, 2005 at 09:37:48AM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
> > 
> > You are ignoring advice, repeatedly even.  Why can't you just link
> > statically to FFmpeg and be done with it?  The rest of the world does
> > it, are they all wrong and you are right insisting on dynamic linking?
> 
> The rest of the world doesn't statically link anything ever, dynamic
> linking works for every single library based project in existence
> today, and I'm asking the question what make ffmpeg different? please
> answer I've seen nothing from the ffmpeg developers apart from sheer
> this is my project and we don't care about anyone but us ffmpeg
> developers which to be honest means the project needs to grow up a
> bit...

The FFmpeg API changes frequently, thus it is best to link statically
and avoid problems.  There are several projects that work this way with
FFmpeg and they are not having problems.

> > You have to differentiate between end-users and "users" that are
> > developers themselves, people like you that reuse code or include
> > libraries.
> > 
> > You forget that with free sw projects the developers are users
> > themselves.  If you drop all the users, you still have the devs using
> > their own stuff.  If you drop all the devs, you have no software to use.
> 
> You do, you still have the last release of the software,

I was referring to the fact that software needs to be written before it
can be used...

> developers believing they are more important than users is one of
> those little mistakes open source developers are always making...

We learned this from Microsoft: Developers, developers, developers,
developers.  Seriously, it has never been about anything else.
Users and developers share some sort of symbiotic relationship, but
developers really do come first, they are the ones that move the
software along.  Healthy projects are the ones that have enough
developers, not the ones that have plenty of users.

> > > I am an open source developer who maintains TWO open source projects
> > > (Motion and Open2300) and helps with documentation on the PWC driver. I
> > > spend 2-3 hours a day on open source development. And often 8 hours a day
> > > in the weekends and vacations. And it is not my daytime job. I have a full
> > > time job on top of that. I am not paid either for my work. And I do not
> > > even accept donations. I think I am doing my share for the open source
> > > community and do not need to be called a troll.
> > 
> > These numbers are not going to impress anyone around here.  There are
> > members of this mailing list that spend (or have spent) considerably
> > more time on free sw than you.
> 
> Again condescending answers, you missed the point completely.. he
> spends his time contributing where he feels he can help on open source
> projects, he is trying to start a reasonable debate and the only
> answer I've seen so far is "we don't want to" a small bit of technical
> reasoning mightn't go astray...

We have suggested static linking several times and all the answer we get
is "I don't want to.".  How is that different?

> > But maybe you are not tackling a real issue in a constructive manner.
> > If you wish to have this problem solved, provide manpower or funding.
> 
> how much funding would be required to do what Kenneth asks? 50
> dollars, it involves renaming snapshots once every 3 months with a
> fixed version number to provide a baseline for other projects... I
> really can't believe the arrogance and condescending answers he is
> getting back from the developers...

Making good releases takes much more than that.  I have updated the
ChangeLog for the last few MPlayer releases and boy I can tell you it's
a tedious task that takes more hours than you would expect it to.  For
the last release I was tired of doing it and it took me quite some
effort to recruit someone from the "Hey, let's make a release!"-crowd to
do it instead of me.  After finishing he said "Hats off to the people
who have been doing this for the previous releases."

Let's try to move this flamefest^wdiscussion back into a more
constructive direction.  What I would really like to see is people
volunteering to help instead of ranting.  Michael made a list of things
to do for a release:

http://mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2005-June/002242.html

Pick one and do it, the release will be out in no time.

Diego





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