[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] doc/developer: require transparency about sponshorships.

James Almer jamrial at gmail.com
Sun Jan 13 17:00:59 EET 2019


On 1/13/2019 11:06 AM, Nicolas George wrote:
> James Almer (12019-01-13):
>> Be the change you want in the world and post your day job income here
>> for all to see. Otherwise drop this absurd obsession of yours and let
>> people have a peaceful weekend.
> 
> Of course:
> 
> All that I have received related to my work on FFmpeg is:
> 
> - coverage of my expanses to attend the VDD;
> 
> - some t-shirts and a few goodies.
> 
> The money that I would have received for mentoring in GSoC 2015 was
> given to the project.
> 
> Note that I do not make a point of pride of not having gotten much of
> street value from my work on this project, this is not the reason I do
> it. But you asked.
> 
> And to prove I really do not consider this a matter of privacy, I can
> add my income from not-FFmpeg related: I am a public servant of the
> French Éducation nationale in the PRAG corps at the salary step 9 with
> as little overtime as accepted (0-2 hours depending on the year) plus
> one hour of oral interrogation in prépa and a few yearly hours of
> coordination with a project. The monetary amounts for all this is of
> public record.
> 
>> A patch pushed without review, if it gets challenged after the fact,
>> will get reverted unless fixed/addressed, like it happened plenty of
>> times.
> 
> And who will do the challenging, since we already do not have enough
> time to review the patches in the first place?

If no one challenges, then either no one looked at it, or everyone that
looked at it was fine with it. Where is the issue then?

You're looking for a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. If a
patch is disliked, it will be challenged, regardless of the incentive
behind it. If a patch is not challenged, then it was either ignored or
liked, and likewise, the incentive behind it had no relevance. This
patch you propose will not change that.

Sponsored work has been disclosed before without any kind of guidelines.
This patch, in its current form, is both unnecessary and completely
unacceptable.
If you want something people will not NAK on sight, write one where you
require to double check who the copyright belongs to in case of
sponsorship to prevent wrong commit authorship, and to *suggest* stating
sponsorship status if the copyright ultimately belongs to the developer.
Drop any mention about remuneration disclosure if it was not public to
begin with, and then it can be discussed.


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