[FFmpeg-user] Consequences to rude and hostile behaviour

[Phil Rhodes]

> I think your intervention would have been more efficient if you had
> chosen to make it in direct response to one of these rude behaviors.

I have tried to do this. I have been trying to do this for years. It doesn't work; overtures intended to be helpful are almost always violently rejected.

Very few open source projects are particularly welcoming of any contribution other than code and I think this is a huge indictment of not only ffmpeg, but the wider world of open source. 

For instance, in ffmpeg, for years the colour handling was wildly incorrect simply because nobody on the project had the knowledge or experience to implement it properly. They had the software engineering ability but not the subject knowledge. 

For another instance, one ffmpeg contributor, years ago, launched a polemic against drop-frame timecode which he felt was untidy which did nothing more than reveal just how appallingly ignorant some core contributors were and are on the basic tenets of digital video. If he only knew!

I have twenty years' experience in the field. I offered free consultancy and was rudely rejected. I made similar overtures to the Cinelerra video editor project with much the same result.

Open source software is often so violently hostile to non-code contributions that I'm surprised this conversation doesn't happen more frequently; this problem is holding back open source in general.

Phil