Hi Nicolas I wrote this before seeing the "Reply-To: ffmpeg-devel" But i wanted to send a mail to ffmpeg-devel anyway, so its this mail
I think we largely agree on the technical direction
On Fri, Jul 31, 2026 at 11:51:19AM +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> Michael Niedermayer (HE12026-07-28):
> > * Nicolas, are you willing to continue maintaining the libavfilter
> > framework?
>
> Thanks for your confidence. I would like to continue maintaining it, I
> need to be able to do so, so I have two conditions:
>
> 1. Technical: That the official tree is the way it needs to be to work
> and evolve properly: only one conversion filter per media type (scale
> for video) and negotiation defaults to not supporting premultiplied.
1a. Regarding having only one conversion filter, I believe there is already
agreement on this with Nikklas, if i understood him correctly last wednsday,
he intends to implement premultiplied alpha processing directly in swscale at
some unspecified future point in time.
1b. Yes a filter that doesnt specify support should be assumed not to support
premultiplied.
>
> 2. Political: That it is made absolutely clear that a maintainer is 100%
> within their prerogatives to revert on sight commits pushed despite
> objections or requests for more time.
Yes, I intend to write a mail about this to the mailing list. (even better
reply-to makes this that mail)
There are, however, a few things that must also be clear:
A. "Nothing" outside libavfilter that worked before the original commit thats
reverted, can break.
A1 If code has been in the tree for months, reverting it must also not break
code that has worked with it for months.
B. A maintainer needs to be active. he cannot have the authority to revert
other people’s commits while contributing only eight commits to libavfilter
in two years. (of course author or committer counts are just numbers that
have
limited meaning)
But I think authority and active maintainership need to be connected. The
maintainer
does not need to be in the top 3 committers, but he should be active.
C. A maintainer should help other contributors resolve technical disagreements.
In the previous premultiplied-alpha discussions, both sides drifted away
from trying to find an actual solution. The detailed information and test
image you sent me regarding my pull request are a good example of how such
feedback should work.
>
> (Maintainer's authority of course subject to global project authority,
> of course, preferably from a trusted and competent long-term leader
> rather than a committee elected by Anton's sock puppets.)
>
> I briefly considered asking for excuses, but that would be childish and
> unproductive. But these three should not expect any help from me in the
> foreseeable future.
>
> I strongly think the burden of fixing the tree to achieve 1 should be
> Niklas' task, as he broke it and he was paid for it, but I am not making
> it a condition.
Maintainers can reject code and gently push contributors in a particular
direction. They can also do the work themselves.
I am not sure how you expect to get Niklas to work on a particular task.
From my own experience, it is often difficult to convince other people
to work on what one considers important.
Niklas already wants eventual premultiplied-alpha support in swscale,
so that part should not require convincing.
I also know that Niklas is interested in continuing to work on libavfilter
and improving its design, as he has said so himself.
thx
[...]
--
Michael GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB
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because you have nothing to say - Edward Snowden
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