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

  • protozoan_ninja@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    That’s not even the issue. Nobody cares that MS is using ffmpeg. It’s just rude to have as much money as MS does, integrate ffmpeg into one of their core products, then apparently not know anything about it and file hilariously bad bug reports that are actually just support requests after never contributing anything back.

    Like, I’ve used ffmpeg probably since it was released. I’ve never given the ffmpeg developers anything, and I expect nothing in return from them. They don’t know me, they don’t know I exist, they don’t know I use their software. I could not reasonably file a support request as a bug like they did and expect to be taken seriously. Why does Microsoft get to have this expectation when they behave the same way? They’re a big company who asked ffmpeg to do extra work to support MS’s ignorance and laziness, and they didn’t even offer an ongoing support relationship. They wanted to throw a few grand at ffmpeg once to make the problem go away. This is completely ridiculous.

    If they release a software package with a license that explicitly states that they allow the whole world to use it freely without any expectation if return, they cannot complain afterwards that some particular people in the world end up using it. … likewise for bug reports

    Literal nonsense. If someone abuses my bug tracker to act like a clown, I have every right to decline their support requests, even if I licensed my software open source. Nothing in open source philosophy requires you to bend over backwards to cater to every MS project manager’s poorly thought-out whims. You’re literally just making things up.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      If someone abuses my bug tracker to act like a clown

      From what little we know, it looks like they used it correctly

      I have every right to decline their support requests

      Priority is guidance from the user. The maintainer always has the decision how they’ll respond. You could have said you don’t have time, you could have said it’s on my queue to look at later, you could have said you don’t provide support.

      • protozoan_ninja@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        We’re talking about a hypothetical. I’m not the ffmpeg maintainer. The person got help in their thread and everything was courteous. I wouldn’t even be rude about it, I just wouldn’t hold their hand, and I might make a comment about the value of doing some legwork on your own when an update to a core dependency seems to break something. If this kind of behavior is considered sensible for a project manager at MS, then apparently I’m more qualified to manage projects than a lot of people at some of the largest corporations on Earth.

        The maintainer always has the decision how they’ll respond.

        That is literally the opposite of what you were just saying. You were saying that open source developers can’t even complain when responsible people at gigantic corporations file dumb bug reports against their project.

    • lysdexic@programming.dev
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      8 months ago

      That’s not even the issue. Nobody cares that MS is using ffmpeg.

      You surely haven’t been paying attention to this thread.

      It’s just rude to have as much money as MS does (…)

      Seriously? Is this the argument you’re going with?

      Unbelievable.