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

[Diego Biurrun]

On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 02:08:17PM -0700, Baptiste Coudurier wrote:
> On 6/8/2009 1:51 PM, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 07, 2009 at 01:38:26PM -0700, Baptiste Coudurier wrote:
> >> Diego Biurrun wrote:
> >>> On Sun, Jun 07, 2009 at 01:22:20PM -0700, Baptiste Coudurier wrote:
> >>>> Diego Biurrun wrote:
> >>>>> On Sun, Jun 07, 2009 at 12:45:15PM -0700, Baptiste Coudurier wrote:
> >>>>>> Certainly not. IMHO, for libamr case, it's already there and keeping it
> >>>>>> does not cost anything.
> >>>>> It costs us the opportunity that somebody might get motivated to
> >>>>> implement AMR-WB encoding support.
> >>>> While I can see how this can be true, in practice I believe this has
> >>>> proven to not have many results outside of FFmpeg.
> >>>> Libswscale was reimplemented by Kostya, AAC decoder by GSOC then Robert,
> >>>> now Alex, but this was still driven by FFmpeg and animated which I
> >>>> reimplemented myself.
> >>> I disagree.  HE-AAC is being sponsored by a Finnish company, you did
> >>> quite a bit a bit of implementation work for your company, there are
> >>> more examples..
> >> You disagree with what exactly ? That reimplementation was done inside
> >> FFmpeg team ? I'm sorry but I really believe this is true. Most (maybe
> >> all) reimplementations were done by someone from FFmpeg team, or from
> >> GSOC which was explicitely wanted and driven by FFmpeg team.
> > 
> > I'm saying that implementations and reimplementations have been funded
> > by outside sources.  If the coder being funded was a part of the FFmpeg
> > team or not is irrelevant.
> 
> Libswscale and Animated gif were funded ?

I did never claim that.

> Hell, no, that's exactly the point. Nobody will "reimplement" something
> that works because of FFmpeg's own interest, except one FFmpeg
> developper or one developper from GSOC which was paid thanks to FFmpeg.
> 
> Now one company gratefully funded HE-AAC after the project was started
> and left over from GSOC, that's great and I wish there would be more,
> however it's not done yet, I hope it will be soon, but I don't think
> removing libfaad did all help on this, it's still there in the tree and
> hopefully it is otherwise you couldn't decode HE-AAC.

You are confused.  libfaad was never removed.  Robert asked to keep it.
HE-AAC was not a leftover from GSoC, regular AAC decoding was.  HE-AAC
is being sponsored despite the fact that libfaad decodes it perfectly.
Robert was also funded to get the SoC regular AAC decoder into FFmpeg.

> >>>>> It also costs me some credibility when dealing with license violators.
> >>>>> We do not like companies distributing nonfree builds of FFmpeg, but we
> >>>>> keep the means to create such builds.
> >>>> "me" ? You mean FFmpeg
> >>> I mean both FFmpeg as a project as well as myself when dealing with
> >>> license violators.
> >> It would more adequate to say "us" here then I think.
> > 
> > Correct.  It costs both myself as representative of FFmpeg credibility
> > as well as FFmpeg as a project.
> 
> I think many developers could be and IMHO should be representative of
> FFmpeg credibility. In case you didn't get it, I'll make it clear this
> time: replace "myself" by "us". Thanks for your understanding.

You seem to misunderstand what I am talking about.  When I deal with
license violators, the credibility of other individual devs is not on
the line.  It's just me personally and the project as a whole.

Diego