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

[Stefano Sabatini]

On date Monday 2011-03-14 20:51:49 +0200, Felipe Contreras encoded:
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 1:10 PM, madshi <madshi at gmail.com> wrote:
> > we had a coup. Now we seem to have a re-coup. It feels
> > to me as if we were in the Dark Ages. People are fighting
> > with each other instead of working together.
> >
> > As far as I can see, if nothing changes, there are 3 ways
> > this could go:
> >
> > (1) Either Michael "wins". As a result some developers
> > will leave.
> 
> Let's define "win". Michael wants to remain as dictator of FFmpeg.
> 
> > (2) Or the new leadership team wins. As a result some
> > different developers will leave.
> 
> Let's define "win". The "new leadership" doesn't want Michael as
> leader, and wants _everybody_ to submit patches for review.
> 
> People voted to keep their commit access, which is stupid. I will
> exemplify it as wanting to park their formula one car after running a
> race, somebody has to run the race, and somebody has to park the car,
> but nobody cares about who parks the car, it's just a duty somebody
> has to do. Why fight for a chore?

The point is that the new committership mechanism has problem in
itself, which have been questioned many times. A possible solution
would be to refine those rules (which was likely to happen before the
domain stunt and consequential libav.org stunt).
 
> But whatever, 14 people said in an invalid vote that they would rather
> have commit access, this "vote" didn't include threats about them
> leaving if this wasn't done, nor did say anything about Michael's
> dictatorship.

I tend to agree that that vote is not to be considered valid. *Nor* is
the "Announcement" to be considered like a valid vote, since as it has
proven it was not clear to all the subscribers what was the final
outcome, *and* many developers were left out of the change.

So we're back to square one, developers should find a legitimate way
for expressing how they want to change the project. FFmpeg is not
special and this very same situation can be found in most floss
projects, no need for "coups", no need for forks.
-- 
FFmpeg = Freak and Frightening Mean Portable Encoding/decoding Geek