this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024

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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 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

227 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

(page 4) 50 comments

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

@Sibbo I propose a xz style subversion of the code or a dependency, to ensure ffmpeg runs poorly on Windows and Azure.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago (2 children)

lmao Elon is a FFMPEG maintainer?

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 7 months ago

Good, tell leech corporations and specially Microsoft to fuck right off. Pay for it or do it yourselves.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

lmao didn't know Elon Musk is an ffmpeg maintainer

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I wonder if it's the real Elon Musk?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Posted by Elon Musk. Hmm...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

[–] [email protected] 50 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Corporations treat free software as an endless pool of free resources to exploit, pollute, and then shut down.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

Or try to take over like Redis

[–] [email protected] 243 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Can't reproduce bug. Closing ticket.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

New decoder... who dis?

[–] [email protected] 126 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It's what Microsoft would do in the same situation. It's only fair

[–] [email protected] 145 points 7 months ago (4 children)

I understand you are having a problem with ffmpeg.

Firstly, I will need you to open a command prompt and run SFC /scannow.

And then reboot your PC.

And then run SFC /scannow again.

And reboot again.

Until you give up and reinstall Windows.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

-Microsoft MVP

[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

You forgot when the boot loader forgets where it placed your boot partition and you get to do a few rounds of bcdedit /h /s /gofuckyourself

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

have you tried restarting explorer yet?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Also, did you install all updates? Did you already accept Edge as your new web browser?

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Tasteless! MSFT can have their armies of skilled people do this instead of leeching off FOSS contributions. It’s just not an acceptable move from a profit-driven entity to expect free labor, regardless of the FOSS philosophy of the project!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

They offered a few thousand dollars, but not a long term contract.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

To be fair, I'm sure this is a lone developer at Microsoft, not Microsoft as a company. A lot of this still absolutely applies, but it's not Microsoft as a company making an official decision to go ask the FFMEPG guys for free shit.

It'd be nice if the guy had an avenue to go to leadership, tell them about the issue, and just ask them to actually fund the guys to work on it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

But it seems that it’s actually built in to some part of their software so Microsoft is still responsible as a whole.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Fair! But if someone works in tech, this kind of etiquette is something worth learning