[FFmpeg-devel] Develop FFmpeg through your browser?

[Thilo Borgmann]

Am 07.11.24 um 19:55 schrieb Ronald S. Bultje:
> Hi,
> 
> You raise good questions that certainly deserve further exploration, in
> fact I'd be deeply supportive of such discussions. However...
> 
> On Sat, Nov 2, 2024 at 7:56 PM Michael Niedermayer <michael at niedermayer.cc>
> wrote:
> 
>> That said, I find the discussions about such key decissions being done
>> each year
>> on "videolan developer days", inappropriate and hostile.
>>
> 
> Why?
> 
> (I know, you explain further:)
> 
> 
>> Such a conference is great for people to sozialize, meet, discuss
>> technical things
>> drink their favorit drinks together and eat their favorit foods together.
>> but key project decissions should be discussed where everyone has equal
>> access.
>> (and not just the option of traveling around the world)
>> Not only does this matter for fairness and finding the best solutions,
>> there is
>> also the danger of political parties forming from the clustering of people
>> discussing mainly within their silos.
>>

> For me, interactive face-to-face discussions around these subjects, even
> amongst only subsets of the full devgroup, are far superior compared to
> endless email discussions. I see it as bazaar vs cathedral, where what
> you're asking for is cathedral-style.

IIUC I disagree. A face-to-face session with a moderator is almost cathedral and cut off (i.e. moderated) at any point. Also includes hardly any time to think about the topic if not done before and includes quite a bit of social- and/or group-effects.
Whereas a discussion on the ML avoids these drawbacks IMO - you have time to think, you can branch off details, caring people group around the details in question, you can avoid parts of the discussion you don't care about.


> I agree this is not how decisions ought to be made, but early-stage
> discussions like this should be fine.

ML driven discussions include the whole chain of argumentation about every aspect for everyone to follow up on - whereas bringing a face-to-face discussion to the ML and then iterate on it looses that whole part of the discussion.

-Thilo