[FFmpeg-devel] Democratization work in progress draft v2

[James Almer]

On 1/31/2025 11:58 AM, Nicolas George wrote:
> Niklas Haas (12025-01-30):
>> This should be time-gated to count only commits in the recent, say, 3
>> years (to match the current GA cycle). Counting purely historical
>> commits seems odd.
> 
> On the other hand, we should give more weight to the opinion of people
> who have been around for many years and obviously intend to stay than to
> the opinion of people who have been here for a few months and will leave
> after two or three job missions.

Is this level of discredit necessary or useful for the discussion? And 
how many people have met the requisites after only a few months of 
contributions before leaving? Not to mention the GA does not get updated 
on the fly, but gets refreshed in specific intervals, so anyone who just 
dumps some code then leaves immediately is unlikely to even make it in, 
and if they do, they'd barely last.

> 
> Past involvement, including long-past involvement, is not only past, it
> is both indication of knowledge about the project and prediction of
> future involvement.
> 
> For that reason, I believe that if this plan goes forward, it should
> include all past involvement, but possibly with the condition that the
> involvement continues presently.

This we all agree with. If someone has contributed code a long time ago 
and wants a voice, they should at least be active in some form. It's the 
case of a few proposed GA additions that did not met the commit criteria 
and were then accepted.

> 
> On the other hand, I believe this whole plan is a bad idea.
Yes, it is a bad idea. We have had the current system in place for about 
five years now, and besides one or two CC assemblages being inefficient, 
it has worked. Changing it now because one person was unhappy with a CC 
(That was literally on the way out, in fact) sets a bad precedent, 
because then anyone that dislikes agreed decisions will want to redo 
everything from scratch in the hopes a new system will be more to their 
liking, and the bikesheding and filibustering will never end.

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