[FFmpeg-devel] Query from Reuters on XZ, open source, and Microsoft

[Vittorio Giovara]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 9:19 PM Michael Niedermayer <michael at niedermayer.cc>
wrote:

> Hi
>
> On Tue, Apr 09, 2024 at 03:57:02PM -0500, Romain Beauxis wrote:
> > [Apologies for continuing the conversation, Rémi]
> >
> > Le mar. 9 avr. 2024 à 14:05, Tomas Härdin <git at haerdin.se> a écrit :
> >
> > > mån 2024-04-08 klockan 13:13 -0500 skrev Romain Beauxis:
> [...]
> >
> > > Also as someone who had to maintain a Gitlab instance at uni for a
> > > couple of years, I agree with Rémi's points
> > >
> >
> > My initial contribution was motivated by the argument presented in the
> > original talk that bringing new blood is critical to the survival of the
> > project.
> >
> > If so, then I do believe that there must be a compromise to be made
> between
> > being easier to join for new developers and changing the existing
> workflow.
> > I'm also aware that changing the existing workflow has been discussed
> > before.
> >
> > I don't think that media is not cool anymore, as argued in the talk. I
> see
> > a _lot_ of interested developers in my other projects and all over the
> open
> > source landscape. That's why I believe that it's also important to
> consider
> > other reasons than the talk's argument.
>
> To bring some of the new blood into the project the project needs to
> first understand why they dont. And asking thouse who manage with
> difficulty
> to join could be a biased oppinion.
>

In my experience this boils down to three points
1. there is a legit barrier of entry in a large codebase such as ffmpeg,
but over time newcomers can learn about it
2. the review process can be though and it's easy to miss a ping and
patches get lost, very defeating for a new developer
3. there is net negative help from trolls who spread toxic poison, which is
confusing and uninteresting for the new blood

2 out of 3 can be solved technically, while the last one needs a cultural
shift - overall I think we're doing a good job at slowly changing pace and
having a bit of a better structure to solve situations when they arise, but
there is still a lot of work to do
-- 
Vittorio