[FFmpeg-devel] (trying to be) a voice of reason

[Stefano Sabatini]

On date Monday 2011-03-14 11:18:28 -0400, Gregory Maxwell encoded:
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 11:02 AM, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> wrote:
> > This choice is intentionally designed to favor your group.
> > This is not a fair vote
> >
> > If you want a fair vote you can pick an existing voting system _UNCHANGED_
> > of an existing project like debian.
> [snip]
> 
> 
> I have no dog in this race, but I thought I'd make a suggestion:
> 
> If it's true that ~everyone would agree to an outcome decided by some
> kind of vote,  then you should probably ask some other disinterested
> group to run the election for you.  E.g. the debian folks (Software in
> the Public Interest, really) ran the Wikimedia board elections
> previously.   In particular, a third party run election is probably
> the only way for people to believe that their votes are confidential
> and that they can feel free to vote their conscience without brusing
> feelings.
> 
> If it's not true that ~everyone would agree to an outcome decided by
> some kind of vote, then any voting discussion is probably a waste of
> time.
> 
> If it can't even be decided if voting will or will not be acceptable,
> then your project is probably doomed.   As a consolation, there are
> lots of other FOSS multimedia projects which can make good use of many
> of ffmpeg's contributors.

I already expressed my will to setup the thing with a vote since other
methods tried in the last two months failed, Luca proposed the idea so
I think he's favorable as well. I have no specific knowledge towards
voting scheme, so I'll leave the choice to others.

I hope that developers are aware of the consequences that a fork would
have on the project, on free software users and on free software
multimedia in general, so I hope they will act responsibly, even if
this will mean to take some step back and find some compromise with
the diverging/opposing parties.
-- 
FFmpeg = Fast and Fundamental Martial Powerful Ecstatic Gadget