I don't blame Michael for any of this situation, but this is not a win for the community, product, or users. Development is going to slow way down, bugs are going to go unfixed, and the overall quality will decline in the short to medium term. It is unfortunate that vitriol over the fork led to this situation, where neither libav nor FFmpeg win, and everyone loses.
This is completely incorrect. Most of his commits are merges from libav and other forks, and not code commits.
He's doing a great job at it, but he is not irreplaceable.
and somehow leadership was still a thing for Michael at that time, which really contradicts with something he says now.
Sadly the people on the Libav side never spoke up and nobody really checked or asked since they are "EVIL".
git shortlog -ns --no-merges v11..HEAD | head -n15
git shortlog -ns --no-merges n2.4..HEAD | head -n15
Michael Niedermayer is an EXTREMELY prolific dev who has been banging out FFMPEG code for more than a decade. It's by no means a one-man show, many other devs make large and valuable contributions - but in relative terms Niedermayer absolutely dominates FFMPEG, both in terms of personality and code output.
There are more links in that post to fill you in on the details.
This post is from someone involved in libav but it refers to the different public e-mails that were exchanged when the fork was originated and they document factually things (at least, as far as I can understand)
I'm not saying the points aren't valid, but I stand by my statement that "libav is working to the same goal as ffmpeg. The split is due to idealism and politics, not due to the goal of the project."
'..making FFmpeg effectively a strict derivative of Libav' is a pretty egregious display of bias, one that to some degree shows the distortion of the author's viewpoint.
>former FFmpeg leader Michael Niedermayer.
Former? Well, he resigned today, but this blog seems quite old.
>Since FFmpeg was a project famous for horrid code quality and sketchy and irregular API
Was it? Is it? All I know is a bunch of stuff uses it. Where is that fame?
>“The people behind Libav stole the FFmpeg infrastructure”, some of the admins even got questioned in their workplace if they really stole something. Pity that most of the people related in keeping the infrastructure functional were doing so on their own hardware and co-location, but obviously checking facts is hard, better go help shoveling manure on people.
Server infrastructure is one thing. You mention yourself that you guys didn't have the trademark, yet you took the domain name too? I dunno about the laws in all of the locations where this played out, but in the US at least, that'd be theft.
>started to merge daily everything Libav does more or less since the beginning, making FFmpeg effectively a strict derivative of Libav.
Again, tone, wording, etc. This statement does not stand on its own: If I have a 50 million line project that had a small subsection forked, and every day the fork's changes were merged, that does not make my project a strict derivative. I'm not saying libav is a small subsection, or making any sort of claim about the ratio of ffmpeg original work vs. libav merges, but you have provided zero information or evidence to support the claim one way or the other either.
>Now things are a little more fair and at least FFmpeg more or less states that is a derivative of Libav with additional features in their download page.
Ah, here you go. Kinda. But again, tone. And not much evidence. The ffmpeg download page seems to be open about including code from libav, but uh, additional features could be major. What's the difference in features? What is the actual volume of work in comparison?
>On the other hand I’m not cool at all in having an unfair competition, with a side piggy-backing on the other like it is happening: everything in Libav is merged inf FFmpeg, enjoying the fact the code is polished and cleaned before.
This is a feature, not a bug. Unfair competition? Piggy backing? You are developing an open source project. Do you only want things to be open if the people using it are people you like?
>sometimes the amount of nonsense thrown at you by those rabid fans not knowing anything is appalling.
You write this, and immediately follow with:
>Hopefully writing more about it might help defusing this situation.
Blog posts like this are very inflammatory. You hurl insults, make a lot of claims without providing evidence that backs them, and generally come across as someone who has a lot of personal bias on the matter.
That isn't to say that you're wrong: I have no idea who is right or wrong on this. I don't particularly care. But your blog post is about as biased as it gets. And to note, biased doesn't necessarily mean wrong - you can be biased and still be right.
He got demoted, as written in the blog post, did you read it with attention or you just went through looking for bits you could use? > Was it? Is it? All I know is a bunch of stuff uses it. Where is that fame?
You can ask the GStreamer people or the VLC people, I started being involved in MPlayer and FFmpeg because the code was not really working on PPC...
> Server infrastructure is one thing. You mention yourself that you guys didn't have the trademark, yet you took the domain name too? I dunno about the laws in all of the locations where this played out, but in the US at least, that'd be theft.
We did not took the domain, the owner of the trademark is not Michael Niedermayer.
You claim to know nothing yet you cut quite interesting judgement and you cherry pick in a quite interesting way.
"insults" is a quite loaded term btw.
It certainly seems like he had been leading the ffmpeg project until his resignation.
As for looking for bits I could use, I am quite specifically responding to your question about how the article comes across as biased. I was not looking for parts that seemed unbiased, because you were looking for the biased parts.
>We did not took the domain, the owner of the trademark is not Michael Niedermayer
Your own blog post says " the trademark FFmpeg had been given by the owner of it Fabrice Bellard to the former FFmpeg leader Michael Niedermayer"
Which is it? You say in your post he was given the trademark.
>You claim to know nothing yet you cut quite interesting judgement and you cherry pick in a quite interesting way.
You're defensive. You asked a question about how your article was biased. As an outsider, these are the parts that looked biased.
If you ask a question, you can reasonably expect an answer. If you don't want an answer, don't ask the question.
>"insults" is a quite loaded term btw.
Uh. Thanks for informing me, I guess? I'm not sure how you can in other places say "clean up monkey" is horribly offensive, but "rabid fan" is not an insult at all.
I doubt HN is a bastion of ffmpeg supremacists, and there's no organized movement to suppress your voice, so the reaction your getting should probably be taken as an indication that you should undergo some self introspection. Open source projects depend on community support to exist. Libav may be the best thing since sliced bread, but if you drive away potential users and supporters, you are harming the chances of the project's success.
In context he may consider the vote to keep Michael Niedermayer as team lead a farce. Several of the voters mentioned that they only voted for him to enjoy the resulting drama.
> This is a feature, not a bug. Unfair competition? Piggy backing? You are developing an open source project.
There is hate between the projects. libav was (iirc) started with the intent to be ffmpeg done right, something that is hard to show when the ffmpeg maintainers can simply copy paste every improvement until libav collapses from lack of support/donations.
Not going to take a side in this either, there seemed to be a need to grow up in both groups.
I think he should have left out the bit about 'will I ever return', that might actually cause libav contributors to hold off from making the switch.
Still, it's great to see the recognition that in the end this is all about the product and its users.