Microsoft employee:

Hi, This is a high priority ticket and the FFmpeg version is currently used in a highly visible product in Microsoft. We have customers experience issues with Caption during Teams Live Event. Please help

Maintainer’s comment on twitter:

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.

And further:

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

  • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    103·
    7 months ago

    The fact that we have billions of dollars of revenue flowing through that software every day, but we rely on VOLUNTEERS to maintain it shows exactly how hollow the whole SV entrepreneur culture really is.

    Exactly: I’m not mad about important things being run by volunteers – arguably, that’s a good thing because it means project decisions are made uncorrupted by profit motive – but I am mad about the profit being reaped elsewhere on the backs of their free labor.

    • Royce@mastodon.social
      44·
      7 months ago

      @grue @vzq this is such an interesting space. The general public has no idea how much of their software relies on open source code and voluntary community contributions. There have been so many attempts to figure out a way to compensate these maintainers, but it doesn’t seem like anything has really become the defacto solution. Open Collective and Tidelift are the closest things I can think of.

    • Rich Felker@hachyderm.io
      1·
      7 months ago

      @grue @vzq The key is that these folks are supposed to have both freedom & power to set direction independent of corporate shit, *and* compensation for their labor.