[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Dynamic plugins loading

[Ronald S. Bultje]

Hi,

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 5:29 AM, Luca Barbato <lu_zero at gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 11/01/2010 01:52 AM, Ronald S. Bultje wrote:
>> I used to think this kind of stuff was good. But is there really an
>> advantage to all this? I can think of disadvantages:
>> - no strong license enforcement because you can separate shipping of
>> software pieces that have strictly incompatible licenses
>
> You can already if you want in the application
>
>> - security becomes worthless, any plugin can exploit a system
>
> So the application
>
>> - stability becomes a nightmare as soon as you start thinking about
>> possibly updating ABI/API
>
> Any application have to care about it
>
>> - dynamic plugins won't share code with the main source tree, which
>> means that the best point of FFmpeg - fast and lean - no longer
>> applies
>
> No different than features implemented in the main application IMHO

The difference is that if one application becomes "problematic", users
will simply not start the application anymore if it's unsafe /
unstable, and we're done. No more problem.

In the real world, if installing a new application ("ConvertYtoCVC")
with a custom codec causes my Chrome to suddenly crash and become
exploitable, we are in deep PR shit. There is no way to save ourselves
from that mess.

Ronald