[yard2010]

A bit off topic, IMO ffmpeg is one of the best software ever written. Fabian Fabrice (ff) is one talented engineer and people such as him are a gift to the FOSS community.

I used to work in a ~2 bil unicorn in which a big part of the products we worked on relied on ffmpeg.

[edent]

And you gave a sizable donation, right?

https://ffmpeg.org/donations.html

[Xeoncross]

I have a feeling the ~$2b wasn't his

Still, good reminder to speak up about the products to leadership and see if we can get them to donate.

[slacka]

Absolutely. For the first startup that I worked for, I earned a position with budgeting authority. Once we achieved profitably, I added donations to the open source tools we relied upon. I received some pushback and defended it. Looking back, I am proud of that choice. I encourage you all to do the same.

[justsomehnguy]

Can you share what you chose as your points and what convinced them at the end?

[slacka]

One argument I made was sponsoring a project, especially buys you support / developer relations. For example, we replaced a commercial PKZIP license with 7-zip. Was able to use the fact that one of the project we donated to, 7-zip, implemented a feature request that helped in this transition. That combined with the fact that these donations relative to our proprietary software costs were insignificant, made it an easy sell to my boss.

[justsomehnguy]

Thanks forr the reply.

When you have a direct involevment in the project it surely helps.

And thanks for supporting 7z, from a guy who use it dayly! *cheers*

[hutzlibu]

What likely works better in conservative environments, are not donations, but (generous) support contracts. This is something buisness people can understand.

[Drakim]

While I'm sure you are right, I can't help but to be irked by this strange environment we live in where we have to treat business people like infants who need things mashed and mushed into something they can digest and understand.

Nobody had to explain to me the concept of donating to support somebody working on something my business relies on, it's just common sense.

If I was really reliant on books documenting tolls and laws in regards to international trades, and you wanted to give a donation to support this work, I wouldn't be all "me no understand, please explain it in programmer-speak for me".

[justsomehnguy]

Oh, this goes w/o question, but not all F/OSS projects are incorporated and/or can provide a contract. Even more trouble if the entities are in yhe different countries.

[halJordan]

How about you just give a donation for all three of us?

[forgotpwd16]

>Fabian Fabrice

*Fabrice Bellard. Also creator of QEMU, TCC, QuickJS, and others.

[hddqsb]

Yeah, the etymology suggested by the top-level comment is completely wrong. Wikipedia says

> The name of the project is inspired by the MPEG video standards group, together with "FF" for "fast forward"

Corresponding source (Fabrice Bellard himself): https://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2006-February/0103...

[9dev]

There are no people such as Him. There’s nobody else in his league, heck, there’s nobody even playing the same game as Fabrice Bellard :-)

In all seriousness though, the sheer amount of devices running code he wrote at any given moment is just ridiculous.

[cornstalks]

FYI the “FF” in “FFmpeg” stands for “fast forward.”

[30nn]

I love ffmpeg, but its performance has got to improve on ARM!

[andrewstuart]

Fabian Fabrice has created many amazing software projects.

Comparable only to famous film director Alan Smithee who has credit for so many films.