[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] the future of libamr

[Diego Biurrun]

On Sat, Jun 06, 2009 at 07:20:09PM +0100, Robert Swain wrote:
> Diego Biurrun wrote:
> >On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 02:21:23PM +0100, Robert Swain wrote:
> >>OK, then I guess the only issue is a feature regression in that 
> >>libopencore-amrwb doesn't do encoding. As Diego points out, there's 
> >>nothing stopping people from using FFmpeg 0.5 or a version of svn from 
> >>before the libamr reference wrapper gets removed, but I'm not really 
> >>fond of feature regressions. Is there any good reason not to keep the 
> >>libamr-wb reference encoder wrapper?
> >
> >May I suggest that you read the 25+ messages in this thread before
> >restarting the discussion at square one?  Pros and cons have already
> >been hashed out extensively and a consensus seemed to have been reached.
> >If you have anything new to add, reply to the relevant subthread.  Just
> >raising the same concerns over and over again is inconstructive and
> >leads nowhere.
> 
> I had actually read them but had forgotten about them as I was out of 
> the country so, I apologise for this. However, I didn't see a deadline 
> set for consensus to be reached.
> 
> Benoit had some reservations about feature regression then decided it 
> was OK, though I don't see him mention any compelling reason why he 
> changed his mind other than that removing non-free components is good. 
> Benoit?
> 
> Then Baptiste commented that he wasn't too keen on a feature regression 
> and you stated that it seemed a consensus had been reached. Then 3 days 
> after Baptiste's comment, you committed the OpenCORE support and said 
> you were going to remove libamr. A consensus has not been reached if not 
> everyone has accepted the same idea and it seems not everyone has.
> 
> I'm not sure how many people actually use AMR-WB encoding. I would guess 
> the parties interested would be mostly commercial.
> 
> I don't really know what option is best. It's non-free but removing it 
> would be a feature regression. Why did we have the AMR reference 
> implementation wrapped in the first place if not having non-free stuff 
> in FFmpeg was a major concern versus not having the feature?

Quoting myself:

  Pros and cons have already been hashed out extensively and a consensus
  seemed to have been reached.  If you have anything new to add, reply
  to the relevant subthread.  Just raising the same concerns over and
  over again is inconstructive and leads nowhere.

Of course it's a feature regression.  But luckily there is no law
against it.  All you need are good reasons.  We have done it before.
There are good reasons now, so we can do it again.

Diego