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> As our internal fork became increasingly outdated, we collaborated with FFmpeg developers, FFlabs, and VideoLAN to develop features in FFmpeg that allowed us
by dewey 8mo ago
> As our internal fork became increasingly outdated, we collaborated with FFmpeg developers, FFlabs, and VideoLAN to develop features in FFmpeg that allowed us to fully deprecate our internal fork and rely exclusively on the upstream version for our use cases.
Some comments seem to glance over the fact that they did give back and they are not the only ones benefitting from this. Could they give more? Sure, but this is exactly one of the benefits of open source where everyone benefits from changes that were upstreamed or financially supported by an entity instead of re-implementing it internally.
- vmaurin 8mo agoA gentle reminder that all the big techs companies would not exist without open source projects
- kccqzy 8mo agoWould Microsoft not exist without open source project? Microsoft is that company founded in 1975, but the GPL license only appeared in 1989, and BSD licenses appearing at roughly the same time just because of the Unix Wars. Big tech companies can easily hire manpower to make proprietary versions of software, or just pay licensing fees for other proprietary software. They don’t rely on open source. Microsoft bought 86-DOS to produce MS-DOS; Microsoft paid the Unix license to produce Xenix; and when Microsoft hired former DEC people to make NT, it later paid DEC. Instead, modern startups wouldn’t exist without open source.
- golfer 8mo agoIndeed, open source exists despite Microsoft trying its hardest to kill it. Microsoft was (and still is) a ruthless, savage competitor. Their image has softened as of late but I'll never forget the BS they did under Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
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- ok123456 8mo agoMicrosoft wouldn't exist without the theft of CPU time on time-shared computers.
- cedws 8mo agoI think they would due to massive financial incentive. On the other hand, a lot more developers might actually be getting compensated for their work, instead of putting their code on the internet for free and then complaining on social media that they feel exploited.
- dirasieb 8mo agoit's the exact opposite but alright, take a look at who's behind funding and sending code to the linux kernel if you want an example
- OKRainbowKid 8mo agoThe exact opposite? Can you elaborate?
- rcxdude 8mo agoI would more say it's both: this is kind of the idea of open source, at least for the large-scale projects that are permissively licensed.
- izacus 8mo agoAnd a gentle reminder that most of open source you use was developed and is maintained by tech companies. Take a glance and contributor lists for your projects sometime.
- BitsAndObjects 8mo agoYes, they contributed to open source - this is a good thing. But personally, I took issue with the tone of the blog post, characterised by this opening framing: >For many years we had to rely on our own internally developed fork of FFmpeg to provide features that have only recently been added to FFmpeg Could they not have upstreamed those features in the first place? They didn't integrate with upstream and now they're trying to spin this whole thing as a positive? It doesn't seem to acknowledge that they could've done better (e.g. the mantra of 'upstream early; upstream often'). The attempt to spin it ("bringing benefits to Meta, the wider industry, and people who use our products") just felt tone-deaf. The people reading this post are engineers - I don't like it when marketing fluff gets shoe-horned into a technical blog post, especially when it's trying to put lipstick on a story that is a mix of good and not so good things. So yeah, you're right, they've contributed to OSS, which is good. But the communication of that contribution could have been different.
- kevincox 8mo agoI find it hard to be too upset, better late than never. Would it have been better to upstream shortly after they wrote the code? Yes. Would it have been better if they also made a sizable contribution to fmmpeg? Yes. But at the end of the day they did contribute back valuable code and that is worth celebrating even if it was done purely because of the benefit to them. Let's hope that this is a small step and they do even more in the future.
- BitsAndObjects 8mo agoAs I said, the contribution is good, it's the communication via this blog post that I don't entirely like. It could have been different. It could have acknowledged better ways of engaging with ffmpeg (that would've benefitted both Meta and ffmpeg/the community, not _just_ ffmpeg). But corporate blog posts often go this way. I'm not mad at them or anything. Just a mild dislike ;)
- kevincox 8mo agoYeah, I see what you mean. It basically shows that they contributed to ffmpeg purely because it helped them, but then they wrote this post to get good will for that contribution.
- sergiotapia 8mo agoOne thing people can't fault Meta for is that they contribute back to the community at large. We're using React Native, hello!? We're using React! Tons of projects, we should be very grateful they give so much tbh.
- kindkang2024 8mo agoLet alone PyTorch, which greatly boosted the entire LLM wave. Thanks, Meta. Those who benefit others deserve to be benefited in return — and if we could, we should help make them more fit.
- arjvik 8mo agohey hey hey the world would be a better place if we all used JAX instead :)
- popalchemist 8mo agoYes, they do that, but it's not out of altruism. Gratitude may be the wrong word when Meta and Zuck have actively worked to erode people's trust in society and reality, while actualizing a technofuedalist vision of serfdom; literally a 21st century scheme for world domination and subjugation of the poors.
- sergiotapia 8mo agoI agree with you - but the tools they gave out for free still stand no?
- whattheheckheck 8mo agoJust like the farm tools the serfs used were free too
- beachy 8mo agoThey stand out as great examples of commoditising your complement. When your business is pushing ads to people while they watch cat videos, then video processing software is your complement, and you want it to be as cheap as possible. [0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
- j45 8mo agoIt's a positive development, but we can't minimize or ignore the conditions that precipitated it, giving back was less than hanging onto the changes for private benefit. Still, Meta has also put a lot out there in open source, from a differentiation perspective it doesn't seem to go unnoticed.
- lofaszvanitt 8mo agoYeah, but who needs the features of a corp who has to process zillions of videos? Very very very few. So your argument about FOSS is deeply flawed and only serves those in power.
- sincerely 8mo agoWell the alternative is them just never upstreaming and maintaining their own fork, which seems worse for everybody
- lofaszvanitt 7mo agoYou missed the point. Who even needs their features? If you are as big as Meta you have the money and means to do whatever you want.