FFmpeg's future and resigning as leader

I don't know the extent of the drama, but I have used FFMpeg a decent amount and it's been a lifesaver. I know that OSS leaders are extremely under appreciated, and I'd like to thank Michael for all of his efforts doing so.

Interestingly, a recent LWM article on ffmpeg coming back to Debian touched on the possible implications of Michael stopping work on the project: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lwn.net&#x2F;Articles&#x2F;650816&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lwn.net&#x2F;Articles&#x2F;650816&#x2F;</a><p>&quot;Reinhard asked whether FFmpeg is a one-developer project that would find itself in trouble should Michael stop working on it. &quot;To me, this constitutes a serious bus-factor: Without Michael, (probably) nobody is able to replace him.&quot; He went on to suggest, though, that Michael&#x27;s departure could do a lot to bring an end to the fork.&quot;

Before Yahoo! went public David Filo contacted Larry Wall and gave him the option to buy a good portion of pre-IPO stock at a low price.<p>The reason? Yahoo! could not have existed without Perl.<p>FFmpeg has been used in so many profitable ventures (hint[1] hint[2] Netflix). I sincerely hope there is a business leader with the same level of consciousness and grace that will do the same for Michael. He&#x27;s one of the heroes of the past decade. Internet video streaming would certainly not exist as soon as it did without him.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;nicolasweil&#x2F;status&#x2F;466248052454727680" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;nicolasweil&#x2F;status&#x2F;466248052454727680</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.streamingmedia.com&#x2F;Articles&#x2F;Editorial&#x2F;Featured-Articles&#x2F;Streaming-Media-East-Netflix-Making-the-Move-to-HEVC-but-Efficiency-Gains-Lag-96981.aspx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.streamingmedia.com&#x2F;Articles&#x2F;Editorial&#x2F;Featured-Ar...</a>

Wow, that&#x27;s a pretty classy move. Now lets how this will help heal the wounds with the libav community and they will in fact move to the other side.<p>I think he should have left out the bit about &#x27;will I ever return&#x27;, that might actually cause libav contributors to hold off from making the switch.<p>Still, it&#x27;s great to see the recognition that in the end this is all about the product and its users.

Sigh. This is one of those situations where the world has received so much benefit and they didn&#x27;t realize it until that person finally got fed up. FFmpeg is sort of an ongoing disaster, but it reflects the nature of media on the web, and it works. I&#x27;d love to say that my hunch is things will get better but I don&#x27;t think that will be the case short or long term.<p>libsndfile -- another key component everyone takes for granted -- is in a similar position. Full of known problems, super-smart but slightly neurotic leader, and GPL issues that people are pretending not to notice in hopes he finally does a release after 5 years.<p>I&#x27;ve done major community work and man, is it ever exhausting. It&#x27;s a shame we haven&#x27;t found a way to get people the assistance they need. Some of which is psychological.

Thanks Michael for all the awesome work. Sad you are leaving for these reasons, hopefully in the futur, libav contributors will come back to FFmpeg and be less agressive with the leadership, but it might not happen.

A huge thank you to Michael. It&#x27;s easy to forget how difficult playback was just 5-10 years ago. FFmpeg has been invaluable.

&gt; Especially as somehow &quot;leader&quot; is being interpreted by everyone as &quot;the guy who does all work noone else does, and takes all responsibility noone else wants to take&quot;<p>Hmm.

As a VLC user, I&#x27;m sorry to hear things in the FFmpeg community got so bad. However, I thank all involved (including VideoLAN) for the work they did to make something that plays about anything on the major systems. Good news is, since it&#x27;s open-source &amp; mature, it has a chance of rebounding back into good shape either in current or new hands.

Just to add context: this is a post from a person involved in the project since 2004. It is a bit bitter but I found it interesting to read (&quot;What happened to FFmpeg&quot; by Kostya)<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;codecs.multimedia.cx&#x2F;?p=339" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;codecs.multimedia.cx&#x2F;?p=339</a>

Can someone give us a backgrounder on what the split in the ffmpeg community is about?

The message on the FFmpeg site <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ffmpeg.org&#x2F;index.html#message" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ffmpeg.org&#x2F;index.html#message</a> sounds hopeful for a reconciliation of the forks.

This is all news to me but the FFMpeg &#x2F; libav split and apparent attempted coup d&#x27;etat of FFMPEG the other year all looks very sad. This reminds me of the XFree86 &#x2F; x.org splits, the EGCS&#x2F;GCC splits etc.<p>All very sad but makes for interesting OSS history! I find FFMpeg very useful, but then again I find VLC and libav useful. In fact, it is all useful. I hope it all works out.

So who is likely to take the reins on the FFmpeg end?

For those who were around for it, I&#x27;d be interested in a comparison with the ffmpeg&#x2F;libav issue and the GNU Emacs&#x2F;XEmacs times.

I didn&#x27;t follow the background of that fork. Will ffmpeg and libav be able to merge now? Was it a leader conflict or something else?

To whoever contributed to it: the swscale library (colorspace conversions) was really helpful during my PhD work.

Sad to see the hostile fork &quot;win&quot;.<p>I know if I were ever in the position to contribute to general OSS video, libavcodec would be on the list of projects i would never be willing to support.<p>Hopefully these projects can reconcile and libavcodec and its shamed name can be put down and development can continue under the projects true name to honour its true roots.

Thank you for all the work that you have done so far Michael Niedermayer

Every project needs a strong leader. I seems that projects seem to fall apart when decision making become driven purely by consensus. If Linus was not a strong leader in giving Linux definitive direction, this same thing may have happened for Linux by now.

not that he was likely to go without making a ton of derogatory remarks about the livav split.<p>and if he never liked the leadership role as he claims, he was given ample opportunities to get rid of it.

Not going to comment on his skills to lead such a community, which more than obviously are very very good, but for a project manager of 14 years he really writes like a newcomer.