[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] swscale: Do not misuse HAVE_* flags.

[Michael Niedermayer]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 11:43:04AM +0200, Stefano Sabatini wrote:
[...]
> Also when money is involved things tend to get nasty, and that could
> issue frictions between devs, 

yes, iam not happy about it either, and i know what you mean ... thinking
of what will happen to any money obtained through the SFLC/lawsuits ...

also we still dont have a way for people to donate to ffmpeg ...
just think of how many google summer of code projects we could have funded
over the years had we a way for people to donate, even if the money wouldnt
be used for anything else ...


> that's maybe a necessary evil if we
> want to continue to have a dedicated person to the project.

iam not sure if it is a necessary evil, i guess the world is complicated
and there may be solutions that are not evil. But our minds might be too
limited to see them or we might plain lack the power to realize them.

For example, if we follow the simple chain of reasoning that, FOSS is
helping the public tremeandously (free & outstanding software) it would only
be logic to pay developers for working on it, after all teachers are also paid,
so is the police and firefighters as well as scientsts doing research and
advancing humans knowledge ... they all serve the public, so does FOSS
development ... somewhere music & movies also fit in that, like artists and
actors giving their works away for free copying should also be paid through
tax money because they as well help the public ...

Now, not waiting for politicans to learn what software or FOSS is ...
Some random ideas (these of course need consensus amongth the ffmpeg
developers to be actually done)
* adding a bounty field to roundup so people can offer money, technically
  this should be very easy, we also added a substatus field ...
* Finally seting up some way for random people to donate money to ffmpeg
  via credit card or simple european bank transfer, it should also be
  possible for people to tag their donation like ("for snow development")

All in all there really are 2 ways to donate, the first that people can donate
to a specific developer possibly in exchange for some work and donations to
ffmpeg itself. The first always existed but AFIAK the amount from it is far
below even paying for food for any devel, simply because these things are
too rare also i prefer alot to work on what i like to work on and not
work on a specific part that someone wants ...

The second, that is donations to ffmpeg itself would be new, to do this
we first would need to deal with the legal issues and we probably would
need some person who at least for legal proposes is in charge of the money.
The really sensitive part of course would be the question on how to decide
what to do with the money, you already mentioned that this could very easily
lead to frictions which we must avoid at all costs!
My suggestion, thus would be and that may be unconventional simply to
require a unanimous agreement of all ffmpeg developers for each use of
ffmpeg money. Id guess that would prevent any frictions, at least i hope ...
In practice this could be realized by the following simple rules
* Any ffmpeg developer can suggest ffmpeg money to be used for any purpose,
  such suggestions have to be sent to ffmpeg-dev and use [FINANCE] in the
  subject, it is of course recommanded to discuss any such suggestion with
  the other developers before
* Any ffmpeg developer can veto any suggested use of ffmpeg money, any single
  veto renders the specific suggestion void
* If a suggestion does not receive any vetos in 2 weeks it is accepted and
  must be followed by the person in charge of the money. Similarly the person
  in charge of the money may not do anything else with the money than what
  has been trough this process without vetos.

comments and flames are welcome

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

If you really think that XML is the answer, then you definitly missunderstood
the question -- Attila Kinali
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