Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

I know this has been a constant question (in the lines of "Should I go Python 2.x or 3.x?")...but I feel the need to ask it again on the event of a major point release for ffmpeg...but how are things, pragmatically-speaking, in terms of libav vs ffmpeg? I had thought that libav was the new way a few years ago and have more or less been using it on OS X...but now I see that Debian recently switched back to ffmpeg [1]...What are the use-cases for sticking with libav these days? I'm almost sure I started using libav because it was promoted as a concerted effort to create a better API. But by some accounts, ffmpeg has been incorporating libav's changes...and I honestly don't use libav or ffmpeg enough, directly, to really benefit from a better API. And installing both, I believe, has led to a few subtle errors when using libraries that wrap around either.

So, any reason for the casual graphics developer to install libav?

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/650816/

edit: Oh I see that VLC at some point switched to libav. That was likely a deciding factor when I last did my nominal research into ffmpeg vs libav:

http://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=blob;f=contrib/src/ffmp...

> libav [...] promoted as a concerted effort to create a better API

True, but that was biased and unfair. Some developers leveraged their Debian influence to get Debian to switch from ffmpeg to libav, but the technical merits were debatable. In the end, they came back to ffmpeg.

This is mostly a political issue. Software-wise AFAIK ffmpeg has been integrating many changes from libav but the opposite is not true, making IMHO ffmpeg the right choice.

Good article (2012) with in-depth history: http://blog.pkh.me/p/13-the-ffmpeg-libav-situation.html

More recent (2015) short take on the matter, seems pretty biased though: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/wiki/FFmpeg-versus-Libav

Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libav#Fork_from_FFmpeg

The github link is on mpv wiki. mpv is a descendant of mplayer and mplayer2 (the latter being mostly dead). IMHO mpv is the best media player for any OS (lightweight, snappy, reads everything, better options and CLI than mplayer*, etc.).

Software-wise, ffmpeg is the more feature complete solution, obviously. But if you want a morally and ethically okay solution, with a cleaner codebase (but also NIH syndrome), libav might be the better solution.

The same people who use free software for moral and ethical reasons would also choose libav.

That's quite a claim, can you elaborate on that a bit? I remember reading some of the controversy but I don't remember the ffmpeg guys to be very bad.

"Morally and ethically okay" -- what do you mean by that? and why doesn't ffmpeg meet the same standard, in your opinion?

I've read summaries of the libav fork, but I don't recall anyone raising issues of morality.

The way the ffmpeg maintainer behaved – as malevolent dictator – in contrast to the more open development approach of libav, is a pretty big issue, don’t you think?

IMHO the hostile takeover of the ffmpeg project by the libav guys (Fabrice Bellard had to wield trademark to force them to rename the fork) and intense FUD campaign were much bigger issues.

It’s not a takeover – it was a takeover when the trademark was used to force everyone to fork.

But the majority of the project, the people owning the servers, technology, coding the most part, etc – those were the ones renaming to libav.

Your mad that the owner of a trademark told others they can't use the trademark?

I’m mad that a person, who bought a trademark for a project, then decided to act against the interest of the majority of the participants of the project,

Let me get this straight, your mad because Fabrice Bellard, the person who started ffmpeg, asserted his trademark on the libav folks because their fork initially used the name ffmpeg?

Seeing as your the maintainer for QuasselDroid, How would you like it if a group of contributors wanted to take the project in a different direction then you, so they fork it, call their fork QuasselDroid, and then say your branch is immoral, like you have throughout this page, I doubt you would enjoy this, and if you owned the QuasselDroid trademark I'm sure you would use it too.

Actually, with quasseldroid we had the same situation as with ffmpeg/libav – but I’m the one who forked it.

Just in our case the people maintaining the (now dead) original repo decided to give up maintainership to me. (And so we merged everything back).

Also, in your example, I would have no issue.

If another group decided to fork and improve the project, and have more development going on than me, I’d end up just contributing to their project.

This is open source and open development, the very concept is that anyone can and will fork, and may even become the canonical version.

With all due respect, you are not answering the question that the parent poster asked. If someone created a hostile fork of QuassalDroid, and made decisions that you disagreed with, I doubt you would be OK with them using the same name for the project. The right to fork is fundamental in open source, but there is no right to present someone else's work as your own, or to confuse the general public about which version of a software package they are downloading. People should be able to decide for themselves which software to download, not be fooled by someone passing off something different as the same thing. That's why trademarks exist. Enforcing trademarks is not bad or wrong.

The fork would only be "hostile" because I disagreed with it.

And why should I have any more say on this than the other contributors?

This is open development, the very idea is that people are replaced all the time.

Trademarks can be held by an organization, not just by one person. This is how Apache software works, for example. In that case, there are bylaws in place to ensure that the interests of different people are represented, decisions can be made fairly, and toxic people can be prevented from killing the project.

In contrast, projects such as Python have a "benevolent dictator" moderl where one person has the final say about the direction of development. There is nothing unethical about a BDFL model in open source; it's just a choice that a community can make.

You seem to be deliberately confusing yourself about the distinction between forking, which is always allowed, and representing your fork as the original project, which is never allowed. If you are still confused, think about it this way: would you want someone to attach a bunch of malware to your project and redistribute it under its original name, as if it were your version? You can't prevent this without trademark law.

Sorry, what's wrong with using free software for moral and ethical reasons? I often do so because I don't feel like paying nor stealing commercial software. However, being so dependent on OSS has made me appreciate it and want to support it in what ways I can -- call it a moral imperative. Besides contributing bug reports and patches, I sometimes like using new libraries (or edge versions of existing software) if the creator, working freely, is trying to move the ball forward...having users who can provide feedback is a sort of moral support.

In the case of libav...as an admitted casual, I'm thankful that ffmpeg exists, even if its API confuses me...I'm grateful enough to think that the status quo is just fine, whether I can rationalize it or not. However, I do find it admirable that some people (ostensibly) wanted to make what they think were forward-thinking changes, including doing the kind of cleanup that is generally under-appreciated and under-prioritized in all software.

So if they're promising a transparent, interoperable interface...sure, I'll give it a try, and it will be for "moral" reasons in the sense of moral support. I've done the same with MariaDB (over MySQL) and haven't regretted it.

What's wrong with it is that FFmpeg and Libav are on equal footing in that regard; so using that argument in favor of one over the other is... nonsensical.

Nothing is wrong with that, but in a situation where one malevolent dictator acted against the will of every single other member of the development team, and forced them to fork, it’s hard to argue that his version is the moral one.

If you're going to fork, you have to accept that you have exactly the same burden on you to keep up to date on security patches etc, at the very least. As a number of parties found, libav wasn't doing that, and regardless of any moral or ethical argument (for which I've mostly seen accusations and no actual evidence.. I'm largely taking it on face value that there were issues), security trumps pretty much everything.

> This is mostly a political issue.

Let us not forget the reasons for libav. The ffmpeg development process was having a lot of problems due to very controversial decisions that its lead dev was taking. The libav fork has resulted in a restructuring of the ffmpeg development workflow. In this regard, libav is about as important as egcs was to gcc.

Further reading:

http://codecs.multimedia.cx/?p=339

> very controversial decisions that its lead dev was taking

I have seen this claim frequently, but have never seen an actual list of such (and that link doesn't supply one). I get they didn't like the guy, but what were the terrible things he was supposed to have done?

It's interesting to note the parallel, but there are a few differences between ecgs vs gcc and libav vs ffmpeg.

Perhaps the most important is that the ecgs fork announcement [1] was very diplomatically worded, intended to put an end to any bad feelings on either side, and recognized that FSF was completely in their right to be conservative when it came to developing gcc. Another difference is that ecgs really took off and eventually became the official gcc; libav doesn't look like it's doing the same.

[1] http://gcc.gnu.org/news/announcement.html

mpv has a nice (and opinionated, which is good) guide for the things that matter to them: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/wiki/FFmpeg-versus-Libav

Thats nice one: - Libav - Pretends FFmpeg doesn't exist, though sometimes merges individual patches. - FFmpeg - Pretends Libav doesn't exist, but merges absolutely everything it does. Sometimes with consequences; for example there are now 2 prores decoders, and 3 prores encoders.

When in doubt about which open source project to go with, I typically refer to Google trends.

For example, check out this graph between ffmpeg and libav in terms of Google searches. [0]

The entire world can be wrong, but it's rare.

[0] https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=libav%2C%20ffmpeg

It really does seem like the original ffmpeg is the way to go these days.

Pragmatically speaking, ffmpeg is a clear winner. See this article for reasons why: https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/libav-provider/ffmpeg

In summary:

* ffmpeg has merged most of what libav has done.

* Most distributions are using ffmpeg, including Debian now.

* ffmpeg has more contributor activity.

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