[FFmpeg-devel] Is the GA democratic ?

[James Almer]

On 1/21/2025 6:10 PM, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> Hi
> 
> On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 02:53:36PM -0300, James Almer wrote:
>> On 1/21/2025 2:41 PM, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> As people likely know i belive it is not but i got a 2nd opinion:
>>>
>>>
>>> I asked chat gpt this:
>>
>> You can't possibly be serious.
>>
>>> Is it a democracy, if only people can vote who have performed a specific action at least 20 times in the last 3 years? This way 49 of over 2000 people can only vote
>>
>> Michael, please, stop trying to push that number. There are not 2000 active
>> contributors. There's 2000 people currently subscribed to the mailing list
>> for whatever reason, be it sending patches, reviewing patches, because
>> mailman/pipermail has no RSS, or just to watch the drama.
> 
> There where 1892 subscribers in 2011, thats 14 years ago
> 
> also you sound like an aristrocrat looking out of the window and saying
> there cant possibly be that many common people, I have never seen them
> in the palace.

Drop the labels. I'm talking respectfully and not calling you names or 
comparing you with something.

> 
> 
>> Every other day i get an automated email from mailman telling me about two
>> or three removed subscriptions because of excessive bounces or similar, and
>> almost always from unusual domains.
> 
>> I or anyone else could, right now, go and create a hundred disposable email
>> addresses, and subscribe all of them. Do you want them to be able to cast a
>> vote?
> 
> Can you also create them with email addresses one can find with google
> which have lifes behind them, are active elsewhere and so on ?

Ok, so you suggest to make the condition to get a vote being subscribed 
with an address that can be tracked online to some identity and active 
somewhere online? If you make a formal proposal, we could consider going 
with that. But please formally suggest *some* change if the current 
state is not to your liking.

> 
> 
>>
>> You can, and i encourage you, to suggest to change the requirements to
>> access the GA. It can be to make the deadline further into the past, less
>> upstreamed patches, anything.
> 
> Being a "member of the commuity" should give them a vote if you want to
> call it a democracy in relation to the FFmpeg community

Your concept of "member of the community" is extremely lax if all it 
takes is to sign up in mailman, and even more exploitable than a curated 
list of active, or formerly active, identifiable contributors.

> 
> 
>> You can also, i should remind you, propose people to be part of the GA that
>> don't currently fulfill the requirements.
> 
> Do you not see the problem here ?
> Lets just imagine this would be how the US electorate worked
> Republicans have a majority, they vote in every Republican
> Democrats have a majority, they vote in every Democrat
> Whoever is first can end the democracy
> 
> If you want a democracy, you need fair rules, rules before everyone is equal
> if you want to give everyone who fixed a bug a vote right, do that dont vote
> on people
There you have another suggestion for a change. Go and propose it 
formally, same as every other one you made in these threads. But please 
stop creating new discussion threads every week about how things are not 
right. It's exhausting and it doesn't help the situation.

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