Microsoft opens a "high priority" bug ticket in ffmpeg, attempting to leech the free labour of the maintainers - eviltoast

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

  • lysdexic@programming.devEnglish
    39·
    8 months ago

    The maintainer is a human that needs to eat every day, and not just whenever their services are needed.

    That’s perfectly fine.

    But the maintainer is indeed explicitly making his work available to the public for free and without any expectation of retribution of any kind, isn’t it?

    And this isn’t exactly something new or recent or novel, right? That’s been going on for many years.

    What changed? Did anything changed at all, even?

    • Corbin@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      8 months ago

      Microsoft is no longer able to outcompete the Free Software commons. That’s all.

      You might want to re-read the thread and think about how you sound, by the way. You’re coming off as a concern troll, not as a member of the Free Software community.