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Comment by alberth | Hacker News Reader

Let me get this right …

FFmpeg open sourced their software for all to use without having to pay for it. This was a choice they made.

Then on their own web site, they only accept 1-time donations and state “If you find FFmpeg useful, you are welcome to contribute by donating.” [0]

Then someone comes along to donate (and play by the rules they’ve set), and they publicly complain about it?

Some Advice: if you want to monetize Fortune 500 use, don’t open source it. Or at least, create a strategy that allows you to monetize it (like what Sidekiq has done).

[0] https://ffmpeg.org/download.html

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A donation implies that no strings are attached. If Microsoft wants ffmpeg to do something for money, they have to make a business arrangement. They can't just throw some coins at ffmpeg's feet and then start making demands.

According to ffmpeg MS offered a payment of a few thousand dollars for resolving the issue: https://twitter.com/FFmpeg/status/1775178805704888726

(author of the post on X)

To clarify, Microsoft didn't offer a one-time payment to fix any bug. A volunteer explained for free that a command line option had changed between FFmpeg versions.

Microsoft offered a one-off payment instead of a support contract.

They also didn't commit to any timeline for responding in their own ticket tracker and certainly didn't let randos from the Internet set the priorities of the tickets. So IDK, but it sounds to me like there's some reasonable space for an agreement between the parties to be negotiated.

Microsoft Requested Urgent support on a bug from FFmpeg.

They can simply force all users to file bugs with technical details OR get a support contract for general questions and troubleshooting, which would be the best way of forcing companies into contracts.

(author of the post on X)

We cannot tell volunteers to not do something (i.e help Microsoft) in the same way we cannot tell volunteers to do something.

Just because someone asks you to do something (who you have no obligation to help), doesn’t mean you must help.

And if FFmpeg was so passionate to get a support contract from Microsoft, that should have been a requirement first before they provided the support.

Once again, FFmpeg set their own rules. First with free software and now with free support.

Life lesson: Don’t provide free software and free support, and then complain about your own doing.

It wasn't even a bug... they forgot to read the changelog.

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