[FFmpeg-devel] Project orientation

[Mattias Wadman]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2020 at 5:59 PM Olly Woodman <ollywoodman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 6 Jul 2020 at 05:54, Jim DeLaHunt <list+ffmpeg-dev at jdlh.com> wrote:
>
> > On 2020-07-04 07:43, Nicolas George wrote:
> > > [In the FFmpeg project,] [t]here is work in making highly-optimized
> > > decoders, this work is impressive and creative…. But as far as I can see,
> > > that is mostly all there is going on. The rest seems to be rather basic:
> > > fixing bugs…, implementing support for
> > > features that were decided and designed elsewhere.
> > >
> > > And it is not just that it is not happening: there is genuine opposition
> > > to creativity: things that are not already justified externally, things
> > > that do not look like well-known patterns, are met with scepticism and
> > > eventually rejected.
> > >
> > > At this point, we should ask ourselves:
> > >
> > > Is it what we want the project to be, or is it just what we have let it
> > > become?
> > >
> > > I do not think this evolution is the result of a deliberate choice. I
> > > think it is more the result of the stress of success and the stress of a
> > > fork. Success can stifle creativity, because creativity implies the risk
> > > of failure: the project has become advert to risk.
> > >
> > > It has evolved that way, but are we fine with it?
> > >
> > > I personally am not….
> >
> > I am really happy to see this discussion starting up. It is good timing;
> > some new governance committees are forming. They might be able to take
> > it on. From my perspective as an outside observer, I think the project
> > will benefit from you — the people who are at the heart of the project —
> > having this discussion.
> >
> > For what purpose do all of you contribute to FFmpeg? What is the good
> > you see FFmpeg doing? What is FFmpeg's purpose?  What stands in the way
> > of FFmpeg achieving its purpose, and of you achieving your own
> > individual purpose?
> >
> > For me, several comments in the thread resonated. They have a theme:
> > bringing in new participants:
> >
> > On 2020-07-04 08:37, James Almer wrote:
> > > …Another thing worth mentioning is a lack of new blood. Despite
> > > participating in GSoC for a long while, i can't name a student that
> > > stuck around after the fact. Mind, there are new devs that started
> > > contributing for other reasons, but perhaps not enough?
> >
> >
> > On 2020-07-04 11:20, Soft Works wrote:
> >
> > > …As a developer (without a well-known name) who wants to contribute a
> > patch,
> > > things can be quite frustrating here. When that patch accidentally hits
> > an
> > > area of one the very few who are caring and friendly - you're lucky.
> > > But otherwise, a patch will either be ignored or talked into infinity.
> > >
> > > I have a number of things to contribute, but after it didn’t work well
> > > with small things, I decided not to bother with the bigger ones.
> >
> > On 2020-07-05 11:42, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:
> > > On Sun, Jul 05, 2020 at 08:13:25PM +0200, Manolis Stamatogiannakis wrote:
> > >> As a fresh contributor, setting up git send-email was a hassle, but
> > >> not an insurmountable obstacle.
> > > Speaking only for myself, having sent a single-digit number of patches
> > > to FFmpeg ever: Setting up git send-email was not a big turnoff. Having
> > your
> > > patch being not responded to (whether being forgotten, not found
> > interesting
> > > enough, or whatever other reason) was.
> >
> >
> > To the extent you decide that you want new participants to join you on
> > FFmpeg, I'm sorry to say, I think you have a problem. My own experience
> > is that this project is more hostile to newcomers than many other free
> > culture projects I know (e.g. Python, Thunderbird, Gnucash, Drupal,
> > MusicBrainz, Wikipedia). It's not just your rudeness to each other on
> > the email lists. It's not just the inattention to patches from new
> > developers. It's also a simple lack of telling newcomers: welcome, we
> > are glad you are here, we want your help, we will help you learn.
> >
>
> As someone who recently tried to send their first patch to FFmpeg,
> I'd also like to +1 this. It was completely ignored, despite sending
> three reminders (sending a reminder is suggested in the FFmpeg
> documentation for submitting patches). Perhaps it was ignored for
> a good reason, but a non-response does not tell me that, and nor
> does it encourage further involvement.
>
> I've also been quite shocked by some of the rudeness on this mailing
> list, and the level to which it appears to be tolerated (or at least, the
> extent to which there appear to be no repercussions for those who
> repeatedly behave in a way that I'd consider unacceptable in a
> professional context).

+1 on this. Personally i didn't feel ignored and got good code review
feedback. But the amount of rudeness I see on this list i think discourages
people from participating. Also think gitlab or something similar would
make things easier.

>
>
> > Even more deeply, the culture of this project is focussed on checking in
> > compileable code to the exclusion of other kinds of contribution:
> > testing, documentation, support. Those contributions seem not welcome
> > simply because they are not code, and code is all that matters.
> >
> > I suspect that you may find that some of the things that frustrate you
> > are linked to work the project does not value. Repetitive questions on
> > the ffmpeg-users list may in part result from the inadequate
> > documentation, which doesn't tell users what they need to know. Feeling
> > stretched thin over too much code without enough tooling might result
> > from the too little of the right unit tests. And so on.
> >
> > I wish you success as you ask yourself these big questions. I hope it
> > helps you have a more pleasant time in this project. I am confident it
> > will result in a better FFmpeg.
> >
> >        —Jim DeLaHunt, software engineer, Vancouver, Canada
> >
> >
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> >
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