The xz fiasco has shown how a dependence on unpaid volunteers can cause major problems. Trillion dollar corporations expect free and urgent support from volunteers. @Microsoft @MicrosoftTeams posted on a bug tracker full of volunteers that their issue is "high priority"
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. We didn't make it up, this is what @microsoft @microsoftteams actually did: #comment:4 class="text-blue-500 hover:underline" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket...
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
A few FAQs clarified here: https://x.com/FFmpeg/status/17...