[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] doc/developer: require transparency about sponshorships.

[Ronald S. Bultje]

Hi,

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 11:13 AM Nicolas George <george at nsup.org> wrote:

> Ronald S. Bultje (12019-01-13):
> > Wait, what? *You* are suggesting a policy change, not me/us. There is no
> > burden of proof on me. You have to convince me (and us) that your problem
> > is important and your proposal solves the problem. I am not convinced.
>
> I gave arguments in the commit message. Tell me what exactly you find
> unconvincing in them, and I can elaborate. But just "I am not
> convinced" is not how debating works.
>

You have seen a few bad-quality patches, and you now assume that there is
(1) a correlation between bad patch quality and sponsorship and (2) that
disclosure of sponsorship details will somehow address this constructively.
I am unconvinced of both.

For (1), specifically, you have only given anecdotical evidence, and you
have not used any anecdotical evidence to the contrary, even though it
exists in plain sight. For example, some of my patches have been sponsored.
Are they bad quality? Which ones (I'd like to see if you can point out my
sponsored vs. unsponsored patches based on your metric of poor patch
quality)? I would like to see evidence that goes beyond anecdotes and holds
up when applied to the full git tree.

For (2), I am not convinced in particular that requiring people to disclose
how much money they earn will make patches better. Quite the contrary, some
cultures consider finance a private affair and so I think you'll just chase
away valued contributors who have in the past provided very high-quality
patches. This goes beyond the mere issue as privacy - which is also
important, but is not what I'm talking about here. You claim that requiring
people to disclose how much money they make *in particular* will
significantly impact patch quality. But you provide no evidence for this
claim, not even any anecdotical evidence. It is also not self-evident to
me. I think it is merely punitive. Could you provide evidence that
requiring people ti disclose how much money they make will improve patch
quality? Or is it merely meant to discourage such patch submissions
altogether?

Ronald