[FFmpeg-devel] Mending things (was: libavfilter aspect ratio)

[Nicolas George]

Le decadi 30 niv?se, an CCXIX, Michael Niedermayer a ?crit?:
> Iam not sure if the people forking have interrest in keeping ABI/API
> compatible but in case they want to, iam definitly willing to attempt to
> find a consensus with them about such changes.

I was wondering how long it would take for this question to be raised.

To make things clear, I am only a very minor contributor, and as such was
not involved at all in the recent events; they came for me as a complete
surprise. I have some opinion about where to put the blame, but I do not
have all the facts and I will try to keep them completely out of this mail.

At this time, I do not think that any long-term damages have been done.
Sure, the yesterday events make the whole developer community look bad, but
that is nothing a few months will not erase; the story has not even reached
Slashdot yet.

If the API/ABI where to diverge, on the other hand, the damage would be
several orders of magnitude more severe. One of the forked branches would
surely die out in the long run, just like XFree86 died, and some of its
developers would refuse to join the other branch; and either side would be a
more than serious loss. In the meantime, a lot of effort would be wasted in
porting new features between branches.

The result for the whole Free Software community would be dramatic.

People have shown that their anger was enough for them to take extreme
measures. I think now is the time to look for a compromise, for the good of
the whole project.

Regards,

-- 
  Nicolas George
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