3 ms·

Demanding? Seems like the person submitting the ticket wanted to talk to someone quickly. Without context the person submitting the issue m ight be noting tha

Demanding? Seems like the person submitting the ticket wanted to talk to someone quickly. Without context the person submitting the issue m ight be noting that it's high priority on their side, so they're feeling pressure, in case that might convince someone to talk to them sooner to figure out the appropriate action to take. Not everyone at MS is going to be a developer with enough knowledge to take tha appropriate action. To me this sort of reads like some hapless newbie at MS caught between their managers and the OSS developers, neither of which are getting the full context, and so are having wildly different expectations of what's appropriate. That said, I don' think it's inappropriate to offer some money. There's many situations where that can make sense to all parties involved. For example, it could be that MS was choosing whether to sick their own resources on it and submit a patch or ask the developer in case they would appreciate the chance at some money for what would undoubtedly be easier for them to do than for some developer at MS that's unfamiliar with ffmpeg. That doesn't mean it makes sense for MS to immediately go to a support contract though, when honestly setting that up and negotiating it and getting it approved by management may itself far outstrip the time they have to get the problem fixed. That doesn't also preclude them opting for a support contract after the fact once the problem is fixed and they reassess their exposure by using ffmpeg in the way they do (why are they pushing out included libs that aren't tested?). Calling them out publicly is probably a good way to get them to decide not to give that support contract though, since you've proven you're unprofessional enough to immediately publish once side of a grievance very publicly, and who wants to deal with worrying about that in the future?

oefrha 3y ago
“This is a high priority ticket” — in the context of an FFmpeg ticket it seems quite clear what “this” is: the FFmpeg ticket. When you communicate as employee of company X, you represent company X, especially when you specifically namedrop company X. No one cares or should care whether it’s a “hapless newbie” doing the communication. Maybe do better training next time. (The specific engineer is actually quite senior if you look up their name, but that’s beside the point.) In addition, they didn’t “immediately publish once [sic] side of a grievance”, the ticket happened quite a long time ago and was only brought up in light of the xz fiasco.
- kbenson 3y ago
  > in the context of an FFmpeg ticket it seems quite clear what “this” is: the FFmpeg ticket. It can be. It can also be the person submitting it noting that it's high priority to them or their org. That can be useful information, but it's not necessarily a demand. > When you communicate as employee of company X, you represent company X, especially when you specifically namedrop company X. That's both obviously true and obviously doesn't matter in some instances. If some intern at a company starts throwing a company name around, the complaints should be seen by the company, but if it's obvious it's an intern then it's also obvious it's not something it's possible to ever entirely prevent, and in some cases it's expected it will happen and it's just a matter of how they respond internally to prevent it (Microsoft has something like 220k employees. Employees misrepresenting the company will happen). The more power a person has at the company the less we should expect this is okay and the more criticism they should get. It scales from the intern to the CEO. I think this is fairly obvious. If the person in question is in a senior position and was actually demanding something on behalf of Microsoft, then I agree they individually and to some degree Microsoft should be criticized for this, but I'm not sure that's what happened here, so I'll reserve my criticism. > In addition, they didn’t “immediately publish once [sic] side of a grievance”, the ticket happened quite a long time ago and was only brought up in light of the xz fiasco. Okay, so not immediate, which is my mistake, but it is one side of the argument with little clarification of the claims made other than the support request ticket, which doesn't go into details about the negotiations for support at all. Consider that someone from MS could just as easily have posted something to twitter referencing that ticket and saying "We tried to work with an open source project to get a bug fixed, and even offered them money to fix it, and instead they tried to get us on a long term support before it was fixed. Unacceptable." We'd have just as much information about the specifics of what happened behind the scenes, which is none, and all it does it leave people to use their per-existing biases to fill in the missing information and choose who to believe. Better, IMO, to reserve judgement pending additional info.

oefrha 3y ago

“This is a high priority ticket” — in the context of an FFmpeg ticket it seems quite clear what “this” is: the FFmpeg ticket. When you communicate as employee of company X, you represent company X, especially when you specifically namedrop company X. No one cares or should care whether it’s a “hapless newbie” doing the communication. Maybe do better training next time. (The specific engineer is actually quite senior if you look up their name, but that’s beside the point.) In addition, they didn’t “immediately publish once [sic] side of a grievance”, the ticket happened quite a long time ago and was only brought up in light of the xz fiasco.

kbenson 3y ago
> in the context of an FFmpeg ticket it seems quite clear what “this” is: the FFmpeg ticket. It can be. It can also be the person submitting it noting that it's high priority to them or their org. That can be useful information, but it's not necessarily a demand. > When you communicate as employee of company X, you represent company X, especially when you specifically namedrop company X. That's both obviously true and obviously doesn't matter in some instances. If some intern at a company starts throwing a company name around, the complaints should be seen by the company, but if it's obvious it's an intern then it's also obvious it's not something it's possible to ever entirely prevent, and in some cases it's expected it will happen and it's just a matter of how they respond internally to prevent it (Microsoft has something like 220k employees. Employees misrepresenting the company will happen). The more power a person has at the company the less we should expect this is okay and the more criticism they should get. It scales from the intern to the CEO. I think this is fairly obvious. If the person in question is in a senior position and was actually demanding something on behalf of Microsoft, then I agree they individually and to some degree Microsoft should be criticized for this, but I'm not sure that's what happened here, so I'll reserve my criticism. > In addition, they didn’t “immediately publish once [sic] side of a grievance”, the ticket happened quite a long time ago and was only brought up in light of the xz fiasco. Okay, so not immediate, which is my mistake, but it is one side of the argument with little clarification of the claims made other than the support request ticket, which doesn't go into details about the negotiations for support at all. Consider that someone from MS could just as easily have posted something to twitter referencing that ticket and saying "We tried to work with an open source project to get a bug fixed, and even offered them money to fix it, and instead they tried to get us on a long term support before it was fixed. Unacceptable." We'd have just as much information about the specifics of what happened behind the scenes, which is none, and all it does it leave people to use their per-existing biases to fill in the missing information and choose who to believe. Better, IMO, to reserve judgement pending additional info.