[FFmpeg-devel] Files crashing FFmpeg

[Diego Biurrun]

On Wed, Dec 03, 2008 at 04:44:45AM -0800, Jason Garrett-Glaser wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 4:01 AM, Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 11:39:01PM -0800, Jason Garrett-Glaser wrote:
> >> On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 6:09 AM, compn <tempn at twmi.rr.com> wrote:
> >> > On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:54:29 -0800, Mike Melanson wrote:
> >> >>Benjamin Larsson wrote:
> >> >>> This list http://tranquillity.ath.cx/ffmpeg_crashfiles.txt contains
> >> >>> links to files that crashes a FFmpeg version from 2007. Can anyone come
> >> >>> up with a good tool so we can run through and check all these files ?
> >> >>>
> >> >>> This list was donated by Picsearch.
> >> >>
> >> >>Do we have the project budget to send them a nice fruit basket for the
> >> >>holidays? This is some good stuff. It would be nice if some other
> >> >>organizations that automatically process millions of diverse files with
> >> >>FFmpeg could throw some problem files our way.
> >> >
> >> > it would be nice of youtube to send some changes back our way too...
> >>
> >> From a talk I had with the Google engineer who runs the Youtube
> >> encoding chain a few days ago, it seems Google's official policy is
> >> that they're not allowed to publicly admit that they use open source
> >> products such as ffmpeg (!!).
> >
> > What is the reason he gave for this nonsensical attitude?  Google uses
> > open source all over in other places and employs a multitude of central
> > open source devs...
> 
> There were a number of excuses he tried to make for this.  (all quotes
> aren't actual quotes)
> 
> The primary one was that of patents, with regards to x264: "we
> shouldn't publicly state we are using x264 because then people might
> go after you for patent reasons."  There is some glimpse of reason to
> this, as x264 is a rather small project that hasn't gotten takedown
> threats just yet.

The only case where this ever happened was libdts.  But the entity to go
after x264 would be the MPEG-LA.  They have not shown this kind of
behavior in the past 10 years or so, I do not expect they will in the
future.

Also note that none of the attempts to take down open source projects
like this have ever been successful.

> But then I asked him "well than what about ffmpeg?  Do you seriously
> expect that companies would be more likely to go after ffmpeg for
> patent infringement because Google uses them?"
> 
> And he responded that "competitors to Google [e.g. Microsoft] might
> choose to go after ffmpeg to try to 'get at google'".

Complete nonsense of course.  Microsoft could also try to go after Linux
to 'get at Google'.  Or after a ton of other projects where Google has
not problem admitting they use them...

> Yes, the reasoning is complete horseshit, but apparently they're hard
> and fast on not making any public statement on using open source
> software.  This is of course hilarious irony given Summer of Code and
> other such programs Google runs.  By the way, the conversation began
> when I asked him about the possibility of giving some credit to ffmpeg
> and x264 (perhaps in some About section somewhere on the Youtube
> site).

Well, we can turn the tables around and expose that they do use FFmpeg
and x264, together with some proof if need be.  That should settle these
silly matters of secrecy.

Diego