LWN.net News from the source
MythTV/git
Posted Mar 14, 2011 16:23 UTC (Mon) by njd27 (subscriber, #5770) [Link]
It's a *fork* of FFmpeg that is becoming libav
Posted Mar 14, 2011 16:26 UTC (Mon) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896) [Link]
At least according to one post, there is an FFmpeg fork, and that fork is named "libav", which is not the same thing as "the group of developers who took over maintainership of the FFmpeg project some months ago". Like all forks, we'll have to see which one manages to carry on long term. I'd love to hear what's really going on here, e.g., who are the sides and why the fork creators believe there needs to be a fork. Presumably it's because of difficulty working together, since the fork's mission statement focused on "each individual's good behavior and intolerance of bad behavior, mutual respect, active and positive reviewing of submissions and other policies and processes targeted at conserving this environment."
It's a *fork* of FFmpeg that is becoming libav
Posted Mar 14, 2011 17:18 UTC (Mon) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]
for a member of the uninformed public (i.e. me) it looks like the people behind the fork failed to secure the ownership of the ffmpeg.org domain before they executed the coup and now have been forced to rename their fork; I really hope that the whole thing is worth the amounts of drama it generates
It's a *fork* of FFmpeg that is becoming libav
Posted Mar 14, 2011 17:54 UTC (Mon) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
It's a *fork* of FFmpeg that is becoming libav
Posted Mar 15, 2011 2:20 UTC (Tue) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
That's the problem with forced renames, a lot of traction is
found in names which have existed for a while -- two years after
that fork a lot of people still don't know the bulk of the
developer community went into forced exile, because you'll
never find a mention of it on the original site, and it never
got the sort of coverage which *fortunately* the Hudson/Jenkins fiasco
got, and which enabled the vast majority of casual devs, and
even casual users, to start tracking to the successor name.
Of course, the value of an established moniker is one thing that
occasionally encourages someone to make a grab, if it's unprotected,
held by a different structure than the community, or some develop
starry $$$ symbols in their eyes.
It's a *fork* of FFmpeg that is becoming libav
Posted Mar 15, 2011 16:49 UTC (Tue) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
When the developers are gone, it is just a matter of time before the old trademark is worthless.
It's a *fork* of FFmpeg that is becoming libav
Posted Mar 15, 2011 3:23 UTC (Tue) by iive (guest, #59638) [Link]
It's a *fork* of FFmpeg that is becoming libav
Posted Mar 15, 2011 15:00 UTC (Tue) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]
I wouldn't count on the coup leaders' ability to manage a project much; all of this has all signs of power struggle rather than anything else. Specifically:
there are no governance rules set for the new project (aside from the committers are gods and admins are Gods)
there are no measurable goals given,
coup members' communication style still needs some improvement to reach the level of a very impatient high school bully,
their middle- and long-term planning ability seems to be rather non-existent
On the other hand, the drama is of exquisite mud-slinging kindergarten-quality.
It's a *fork* of FFmpeg that is becoming libav
Posted Mar 15, 2011 10:07 UTC (Tue) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]
It's a *fork* of FFmpeg that is becoming libav
Posted Mar 14, 2011 17:28 UTC (Mon) by Frej (subscriber, #4165) [Link]
It's a *fork* of FFmpeg that is becoming libav
Posted Mar 15, 2011 3:15 UTC (Tue) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link]
FFmpeg (now libav) has had stable releases since March 2009.
It's a *fork* of FFmpeg that is becoming libav
Posted Mar 14, 2011 18:48 UTC (Mon) by robswain (guest, #61516) [Link]
FFmpeg fork becomes libav
Posted Mar 14, 2011 20:44 UTC (Mon) by alvieboy (guest, #51617) [Link]
I always assumed "ffmpeg" was a part of mplayer, and was developed in conjunction with it. It looks like I was mistaken, although some devs work in both projects. Is this the situation ?
Is (or was) A'rpi (the original mplayer dev) also a contributor of ffmpeg ? I remember a long time ago he objecting the use of shared libraries on mplayer due to performance issues.
I once contributed a few short patches to mplayer - now I'm wondering if they were somehow moved to any mplayer-derived project. Not that I'd have a problem with it, just curiosity.
Alvaro
FFmpeg fork becomes libav
Posted Mar 14, 2011 21:17 UTC (Mon) by guinan (subscriber, #4644) [Link]
It started out separate.My impression is that MPlayer was the biggest user, so they kind of adopted it.
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20010218084709/http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/
FFmpeg fork becomes libav
Posted Mar 14, 2011 21:53 UTC (Mon) by gmaxwell (guest, #30048) [Link]
http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2011-Mar...
Sounds like a rename to me.
FFmpeg fork becomes libav
Posted Mar 15, 2011 1:23 UTC (Tue) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
FFmpeg fork becomes libav
Posted Mar 15, 2011 8:38 UTC (Tue) by rathann (subscriber, #50815) [Link]
FFmpeg fork becomes libav
Posted Mar 17, 2011 18:26 UTC (Thu) by BradReed (subscriber, #5917) [Link]
March 15, 2011
FFmpeg has been forked by some developers after their attempted takeover[1] two months ago did not fully succeed. During these two months their repository was listed here as main FFmpeg repository. We corrected this now and list the actual main repository and theirs directly below. All improvements of their fork have been merged into the main repository already.
Sadly we lost a not so minor part of our infrastructure to the forking side. We are still in the process of recovering, but web, git and issue tracker are already replaced.
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