4 ms·

Bellard hasn't been involved in FFmpeg for over 20 years at this point, and more like 23. His code was not great and reeked of sphagetti due to FFmpeg back th

Bellard hasn't been involved in FFmpeg for *over 20 years* at this point, and more like 23. His code was not great and reeked of sphagetti due to FFmpeg back then lacking any framework for code sharing between components and codecs. These days none of his code survives. Everything that became of FFmpeg is because of other developers. Yet he's treated as the one-and-only BDFL of FFmpeg, with any other developers building upon his wise framework since time immemorial. These days all he does is hold the copyright, which lets him, *and only him*, elect which project/leader may call itself FFmpeg. He's an unelected dictator, who already used his powers once to ostracize libav developers in favor of another dictator.

doppp 4mo ago
You alright, mate?
thedevilslawyer 4mo ago
That's just, like, your opinion man
jdw64 4mo ago
You could be right. I don't really know much about FFMpeg. But going from 0 to 1 and going from 1 to 100 are different. Usually, people remember the 0 to 1 step more. Symbolic capital tends to go to the first mover. It might feel unfair, but we always remember the first challenger. It might be spaghetti code, there might be countless contributions later, but that's usually how it goes
lnsru 4mo ago
What you describe is obvious corporate management path. You start with MVP, it gets traction, bosses like you and then others will code for the original author dismantling and rewriting original MVP. And don’t be shy - if one can pull this off he’s worth the credits. There are many who can code and not much who can manage.
keyle 4mo ago
Thanks, that maybe one side of the coin but it's very one-sided. The man is busy innovating and maybe has no time to carry on as he focuses on other projects. But he was there from the start and made it happen. Most of the code in the linux kernel today is not from Linus.
Beretta_Vexee 4mo ago
We mustn’t forget the context: FFmpeg and Videolan got their start in dorm rooms, where students used them to stream TV in the dorm and share movies. The Polytechnique and École Centrale campuses are just a few kilometers apart, and both projects began around 1997–1998. I don’t know about you, but as a student, I was too busy drinking beer to write clean code.
- drob518 4mo ago
  I drank a lot of beer and I can’t remember what my code looked like. But I passed, so there’s that.
alecco 4mo ago
I just found this comment from 15y ago on the ffmpeg/libav drama: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/vvdxn/comment/c57zdk2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/vvdxn/comment/c57zdk... I don't know ffmpeg but this resonates with my experience with other open source projects.
- account42 4mo ago
  Sounds about right. Don't know about the internal politics around the original maintainer but the libav folks never seemed right to me. I was glad at the time that the distro I was using left the choice up to the user. As far as the accusations against both rejecting patches and/or rewriting the code themselves goes I can empathize. It's not always easy to take on maintenance of code that isn't written like you want it to, even if the difference is ultimately immaterial. Sucks when this happens to a fundamental project that is used everywhere though. A good maintainer does need to have some ego but not too much it seems.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
mkl 4mo ago
> These days all he does is hold the copyright You mean trademark. The copyright is held by the authors of the code (or their employer, etc.), since there is no copyright assignment requirement. This is similar to how Linus Torvalds owns the "Linux" trademark (in some jurisdictions), but the copyright mostly belongs to other contributors.
raverbashing 4mo ago
The psyop about "only shipping clean code" has been a big drag on projects On the real world, if it runs and solves their problem nobody gives a fucc. Period Props on him.
- fdsfsdsd 4mo ago
  Watch how developers breathlessly defend code quality and stand tall ready to die on the hill against "AI slop". Craftsmanship, quality control, oh, it's all so, so important. No, it's absolutely vital to civilization. Then witness the amazing reversal when some member of The Tribe pushes unbelievably unreadable slop that works. Then we see his Ring getting kissed by all the betas: "if it work, it works". Pick a side. Quality is important or not?
  - youarecringe 4mo ago
    Before AI Slop most code quality that ran in production was shit, that's the GP's point. Anyone who thinks otherwise simply did not have to come in contact with a wide variety of code in their job.
    - fdsfsdsd 4mo ago
      Yet these same developers, these slop machines, are willing to die for "craftsmanship" and "code quality" when they are threatened by statistics. I don't see how you addressed my point.
      - stevenhuang 4mo ago
        Nuance is not your specialty, clearly
  - Calavar 4mo ago
    To call out The Tribe as hypocritical, you first need The Tribe to have a consensus opinion. Agentic coding in particular has been very polarizing both on HN and in the developer community at large - there is no consensus opinion.
wiseowise 4mo ago
[flagged]
nasretdinov 4mo ago
1. I don't believe anyone in their right mind thinks that ffmpeg is still maintained and developed by a single person, and definitely not by Fabrice 2. Spaghetti code or not matters very little, especially in the beginning, before you even know or understand the scope of the project and what it can become in the future. You can indeed refactor code when you understand the requirements better, and it's great that it's what the community did. I still think it was the right call to start with the spaghetti mess to not be dragged down by potential future problems that might never materialise because your project became something very different from what you originally had in mind
- CuriouslyC 4mo ago
  > 2. Spaghetti code or not matters very little, especially in the beginning, before you even know or understand the scope of the project and what it can become in the future. Demonstrably false. Here and on Reddit, everyone will dogpile on a project to call it slop and flag it if they see code smells they don't like. Unless it was written by someone they already know and like from twitter devgooning, in which case it's amazing and everyone should use it.
  - bigfishrunning 4mo ago
    it's possible that "popular on HN and Reddit" is not a universal goal for writing code...
    - CuriouslyC 4mo ago
      It isn't, but if you're sharing something and you care about people seeing/using it, they're the most "democratic" places to do it. Twitter/YouTube can work well but they're rich get richer platforms.
  - tylerchilds 4mo ago
    > devgooning Excellent choice of phrase. Succinct and to the point.
mihaic 4mo ago
Interesting counterpoint. I think this is the Peter principle in software: a lot of people are great at prototyping, but not great at the next stages of the project. Other people step in for those, but their existence is mostly ignored, since they can't easily fit inside a narrative. One think to note though is unelected dictators do have their benefits, even if they come with obvious downsides.
gus_massa 4mo ago
> He's an unelected dictator He has no real power. You can fork the project and organize an election.
Sesse__ 4mo ago
> due to FFmpeg back then lacking any framework for code sharing between components and codecs Funny, I remember this being completely different; FFmpeg bundled ffserver, which transcoded to a bunch of codecs at the same time (sharing motion search and everything) precisely to demonstrate how similar the codecs were and how much could be shared. (Of course, that could easily be spaghetti, but not spaghetti for non-code-sharing reasons.) All on the 400MHz-class machines we had at the time. Do I remember wrong? I haven't looked at these old releases in forever.
stackedinserter 4mo ago
Also it's worth mentioning that gstreamer is far more superior than ffmpeg, with its bindings, plugin architecture, control over stream (valves, tees, etc) and overall quality of code.
- rafram 4mo ago
  I would hazard a guess that a plurality, by a large margin, of ffmpeg invocations are something on the level of ffmpeg -i input.mov output.mp4 for which you don't really need any of those things :)
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
thisislife2 4mo ago
Yeah, ffmpeg is a pretty successful open source project to now give credit to just one man. I remember the times when AviDemux had a much faster / better H.264 encoder implementation than ffmpeg. Open source being open source, ffmpeg incorporated AviDemux code into it and ultimately even AviDemux pragmatically opted to use ffmpeg as its backend instead of trying to compete with it. (Best example of embracing the open source spirit).

Bellard hasn't been involved in FFmpeg for *over 20 years* at this point, and more like 23. His code was not great and reeked of sphagetti due to FFmpeg back th

doppp 4mo ago

You alright, mate?

thedevilslawyer 4mo ago

That's just, like, your opinion man

jdw64 4mo ago

You could be right. I don't really know much about FFMpeg. But going from 0 to 1 and going from 1 to 100 are different. Usually, people remember the 0 to 1 step more. Symbolic capital tends to go to the first mover. It might feel unfair, but we always remember the first challenger. It might be spaghetti code, there might be countless contributions later, but that's usually how it goes

lnsru 4mo ago

What you describe is obvious corporate management path. You start with MVP, it gets traction, bosses like you and then others will code for the original author dismantling and rewriting original MVP. And don’t be shy - if one can pull this off he’s worth the credits. There are many who can code and not much who can manage.

keyle 4mo ago

Thanks, that maybe one side of the coin but it's very one-sided. The man is busy innovating and maybe has no time to carry on as he focuses on other projects. But he was there from the start and made it happen. Most of the code in the linux kernel today is not from Linus.

Beretta_Vexee 4mo ago

We mustn’t forget the context: FFmpeg and Videolan got their start in dorm rooms, where students used them to stream TV in the dorm and share movies. The Polytechnique and École Centrale campuses are just a few kilometers apart, and both projects began around 1997–1998. I don’t know about you, but as a student, I was too busy drinking beer to write clean code.

drob518 4mo ago
I drank a lot of beer and I can’t remember what my code looked like. But I passed, so there’s that.

alecco 4mo ago

I just found this comment from 15y ago on the ffmpeg/libav drama: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/vvdxn/comment/c57zdk2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/vvdxn/comment/c57zdk... I don't know ffmpeg but this resonates with my experience with other open source projects.

account42 4mo ago
Sounds about right. Don't know about the internal politics around the original maintainer but the libav folks never seemed right to me. I was glad at the time that the distro I was using left the choice up to the user. As far as the accusations against both rejecting patches and/or rewriting the code themselves goes I can empathize. It's not always easy to take on maintenance of code that isn't written like you want it to, even if the difference is ultimately immaterial. Sucks when this happens to a fundamental project that is used everywhere though. A good maintainer does need to have some ego but not too much it seems.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

mkl 4mo ago

> These days all he does is hold the copyright You mean trademark. The copyright is held by the authors of the code (or their employer, etc.), since there is no copyright assignment requirement. This is similar to how Linus Torvalds owns the "Linux" trademark (in some jurisdictions), but the copyright mostly belongs to other contributors.

raverbashing 4mo ago

The psyop about "only shipping clean code" has been a big drag on projects On the real world, if it runs and solves their problem nobody gives a fucc. Period Props on him.

fdsfsdsd 4mo ago
Watch how developers breathlessly defend code quality and stand tall ready to die on the hill against "AI slop". Craftsmanship, quality control, oh, it's all so, so important. No, it's absolutely vital to civilization. Then witness the amazing reversal when some member of The Tribe pushes unbelievably unreadable slop that works. Then we see his Ring getting kissed by all the betas: "if it work, it works". Pick a side. Quality is important or not?
- youarecringe 4mo ago
  Before AI Slop most code quality that ran in production was shit, that's the GP's point. Anyone who thinks otherwise simply did not have to come in contact with a wide variety of code in their job.
  - fdsfsdsd 4mo ago
    Yet these same developers, these slop machines, are willing to die for "craftsmanship" and "code quality" when they are threatened by statistics. I don't see how you addressed my point.
    - stevenhuang 4mo ago
      Nuance is not your specialty, clearly
- Calavar 4mo ago
  To call out The Tribe as hypocritical, you first need The Tribe to have a consensus opinion. Agentic coding in particular has been very polarizing both on HN and in the developer community at large - there is no consensus opinion.

wiseowise 4mo ago

[flagged]

nasretdinov 4mo ago

1. I don't believe anyone in their right mind thinks that ffmpeg is still maintained and developed by a single person, and definitely not by Fabrice 2. Spaghetti code or not matters very little, especially in the beginning, before you even know or understand the scope of the project and what it can become in the future. You can indeed refactor code when you understand the requirements better, and it's great that it's what the community did. I still think it was the right call to start with the spaghetti mess to not be dragged down by potential future problems that might never materialise because your project became something very different from what you originally had in mind

CuriouslyC 4mo ago
> 2. Spaghetti code or not matters very little, especially in the beginning, before you even know or understand the scope of the project and what it can become in the future. Demonstrably false. Here and on Reddit, everyone will dogpile on a project to call it slop and flag it if they see code smells they don't like. Unless it was written by someone they already know and like from twitter devgooning, in which case it's amazing and everyone should use it.
- bigfishrunning 4mo ago
  it's possible that "popular on HN and Reddit" is not a universal goal for writing code...
  - CuriouslyC 4mo ago
    It isn't, but if you're sharing something and you care about people seeing/using it, they're the most "democratic" places to do it. Twitter/YouTube can work well but they're rich get richer platforms.
- tylerchilds 4mo ago
  > devgooning Excellent choice of phrase. Succinct and to the point.

mihaic 4mo ago

Interesting counterpoint. I think this is the Peter principle in software: a lot of people are great at prototyping, but not great at the next stages of the project. Other people step in for those, but their existence is mostly ignored, since they can't easily fit inside a narrative. One think to note though is unelected dictators do have their benefits, even if they come with obvious downsides.

gus_massa 4mo ago

> He's an unelected dictator He has no real power. You can fork the project and organize an election.

Sesse__ 4mo ago

> due to FFmpeg back then lacking any framework for code sharing between components and codecs Funny, I remember this being completely different; FFmpeg bundled ffserver, which transcoded to a bunch of codecs at the same time (sharing motion search and everything) precisely to demonstrate how similar the codecs were and how much could be shared. (Of course, that could easily be spaghetti, but not spaghetti for non-code-sharing reasons.) All on the 400MHz-class machines we had at the time. Do I remember wrong? I haven't looked at these old releases in forever.

stackedinserter 4mo ago

Also it's worth mentioning that gstreamer is far more superior than ffmpeg, with its bindings, plugin architecture, control over stream (valves, tees, etc) and overall quality of code.

rafram 4mo ago
I would hazard a guess that a plurality, by a large margin, of ffmpeg invocations are something on the level of ffmpeg -i input.mov output.mp4 for which you don't really need any of those things :)

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

thisislife2 4mo ago

Yeah, ffmpeg is a pretty successful open source project to now give credit to just one man. I remember the times when AviDemux had a much faster / better H.264 encoder implementation than ffmpeg. Open source being open source, ffmpeg incorporated AviDemux code into it and ultimately even AviDemux pragmatically opted to use ffmpeg as its backend instead of trying to compete with it. (Best example of embracing the open source spirit).