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Microsoft opens a "high priority" bug ticket in ffmpeg, attempting to leech the free labour of the maintainers (trac.ffmpeg.org)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/programming

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Microsoft employee:

Hi, This is a high priority ticket and the FFmpeg version is currently used in a highly visible product in Microsoft. We have customers experience issues with Caption during Teams Live Event. Please help

Maintainer's comment on twitter:

After politely requesting a support contract from Microsoft for long term maintenance, they offered a one-time payment of a few thousand dollars instead.

This is unacceptable.

And further:

The lesson from the xz fiasco is that investments in maintenance and sustainability are unsexy and probably won't get a middle manager their promotion but pay off a thousandfold over many years.

But try selling that to a bean counter

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Companies hate giving out cash. Even if it's for software they critically need.

[–] lysdexic 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Companies hate giving out cash. Even if it’s for software they critically need.

I think for most cases getting the cash is the easy part, and the hard part is getting all the paperwork in place to validate payments to random external entities. If that was easy, nothing would stop any low-level manager from making cash payments to random users with a GitHub account.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

All of the other things you mention can be solved with money. In terms of the things that are easy and hard, this very much the former.

The real hard part here is whomever in charge of making the actual decision, to expense a pittance.

[–] lysdexic 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

All of the other things you mention can be solved with money. In terms of the things that are easy and hard, this very much the former.

I don't think you know what you're talking about, or have any experience working in a corporate environment and asking for funding or extraordinary payments to external parties to deliver something. I even personally know of cases where low-level grunts opt to pay for licenses out of pocket just to not have to deal with the hassle of jumping through the necesssry hoops. You just don't reach out for the cash bag and throw money at things. Do you think that corporations work like hip-hop videos?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I do have some experience. What you are talking about are all internal hurdles, and what I was referring to as the hard problem to solve.

Incurring an expense in order to compensate for a service rendered, which is what the company would need to do in this case, is not difficult.

If you deal with amounts that need special consideration, there are people who do this for you for money. I believe that the correct approach is to show up, and sequentially slide individual banknotes from a densely packed stack in their general direction.

[–] MajorHavoc 1 points 8 months ago

I even personally know of cases where low-level grunts opt to pay for licenses out of pocket just to not have to deal with the hassle of jumping through the necesssry hoops.

That is by design.

Do you think that corporations work like hip-hop videos?

They do whenever the CEO is briefly mildly inconvenienced.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

this is true. I tried to donate a small sum to an open source package my team uses a lot. I gave up after weeks of fighting the finance bureucracy.