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FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

code.ffmpeg.org

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Re: FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

#211

Post by bakugo »

strogonoff wrote: post #191
bakugo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A full third of them complaining about the anti-bot protection mascot (yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it) If you're going to force people to stare at a screen with nothing but your quirky anime girl OC for a few seconds every time they visit your website, then in my opinion it's completely reasonable for those people to point out how immature it is. Telling people to "get over it" just makes you sound equa…

The “branding of your captcha page is immature” point is a downside unless you consider it not merely self-expression but an intentional motivator for “more mature” (which not infrequently goes hand in hand with “financially able”) people to subscribe to a commercial offering, thus helping keep an open-source project alive and in an honest business, despite competition with a VC-backed behemoth that’s become nearly a…

> unless you consider it not merely self-expression but an intentional motivator for “more mature” (which not infrequently goes hand in hand with “financially able”) people to subscribe to a commercial offering

I'm fairly confident in saying that self-expression is the #1 motivator here and the commercial offering was an afterthought.

I don't have a marketing degree, but I'm pretty sure that if selling your software to professional businesses is the goal, making the non-commercial version feel extremely unprofessional is really not the best way to do it, considering most people are likely going to find out about the project's existence by seeing it, and it won't leave a good first impression.

Re: FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

#212

Post by HappMacDonald »

KronisLV wrote: post #188
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #162

The comments on this page are a complete cesspool. A full third of them complaining about the anti-bot protection mascot (yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it), others splitting the finest of hairs over software development groups and company politics, and more. Self-hosting is generally good, well done to FFmpeg. Many large projects self-host, and my own ex-company has physical servers in the city we work at t…

> yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it I think it's cute. It wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't cute. It's inoffensive and doesn't get in the way of the software serving its function, the only critique I could do if I wanted to is people unfamiliar with the project would get a bit confused if they only saw the character for a split second: https://anubis.techaro.lol/ I think even Cloudflare gives you a second o…

So wait, is the cartoon mascot at issue the Annubis one for the Cloudflare-like DDoS protection, or is it an actual FFmpeg mascot? Because I don't see any cartoon characters on the FFmpeg code, main, or wiki websites. But I am curious what kinda -tan they came up with. :P

Re: FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

#213

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

sergiotapia wrote: post #27

How exactly does mailing list contributions work? I've only ever seen a few urls of messages but they are extremely obtuse. You would need to click parent parent parent to get context on the message you originally read. I must be missing something and since mailing lists are dying, would love to understand this relic of the past.

Simple: you don't use the browser at all. You download the source code via your VCS client. You find the thing you want to change, make a branch, modify it, generate a patch. You email the list with your patch and a very detailed description of what you're doing and why. Lots of people reply, and your email client shows you the threads hierarchically. It makes sense to you because you started the whole conversation and see their in-line replies in your email client.

As an old fogey who started with mailing lists, and still uses them to send patches, it's actually much simpler than browser-based workflows. Most of it is your own workflow in your own repo clone in your own environment. The patch and email threads are a universal abstraction; you add the rest yourself, with any method you're familiar with. This removes any complexity that would otherwise be imposed by the browser, remote web app, etc. It's like sending someone a letter in the mail, rather than choosing between 15 different messaging systems, protocols, apps, OSes, etc. If you can read words you can figure out your own way to deal with the contents.

And as far as it dying out: I actually think it's faster to communicate via mailing list. The thing a GitHub clone gets you is co-located collaboration, and CI tests. Those things are very powerful, and really should be integrated into a single open source standard, rather than a lot of custom web apps. But the modern software developer doesn't understand the value of standards.

Re: FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

#214

Post by mvdtnz »

jraph wrote: post #185
kookamamie wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a term of art. A veteran programmer here and I also cringed when saw it used in this context.

It's far from new.

It's new to me, a 15 year industry veteran. I know of sourceforge but never heard the term used otherwise.

Re: FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

#215

Post by numpad0 »

mpalmer wrote: post #60

With the calm, respectful understanding that everything is subjective and there's no accounting for taste - and in my personal capacity - I do not understand how cutesy anime characters have been deemed sufficiently tasteful/professional/anodyne enough to be displayed to literally every single person who visits my site. With apologies to fans of the art style, it is a negative signal to me. I do not prefer to use Clo…

~15 years ago I'd come across tweets sharing how European art teachers are struggling with cultural intrusions of anime into fine arts(lol), ~10 years ago Chinese companies started serving anime-style online games, ~5 years ago COVID kickstarted VTubers in anglosphere, now an anime art is in a major OSS like an AC/DC reference.

It's funny how vehemently people respond to anime the first time, it's often so strong that they would not be consistent with their judgements or even own moral standards. It then subsides, and then it'll be something that "doesn't look like anything" to them. Anime wasn't always accepted in Japanese culture(where it was born); it always existed and was growing consistently over the entire postwar history, but there were still plenty of cancellation forces on Twitter when it launched in late 2000s.

Don't worry, companies like Apple would be having an ultra sexualized silver gimpsuit teenager mascot by 2030 and anime hate would be replaced by something by then at this rate.

Re: FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

#216

Post by eviks »

jraph wrote: post #190
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #162

The comments on this page are a complete cesspool. A full third of them complaining about the anti-bot protection mascot (yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it), others splitting the finest of hairs over software development groups and company politics, and more. Self-hosting is generally good, well done to FFmpeg. Many large projects self-host, and my own ex-company has physical servers in the city we work at t…

> The comments on this page are a complete cesspool. I noticed this. I'm quite appalled. Definitely outside the usual HN standards. I suspect the very idea of self-hosting one's code instead of using GitHub is triggrering many people beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for. Are people projecting their GitHub FOMO? Are people thinking that the value of the GitHub they cherish decreases…

> beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for.

Since you're ignoring the reasons by calling them unreasonable, the armchair psychology alternative won't help get you what you love

Re: FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

#217

Post by rurban »

Well, for one it's much faster than the github mirror. Browsing files is at least 10x faster. And getting away from the mailing list send-patch workflow is huge. Though they could have that for free also.

self hosting could drain too much resources I fear.

Re: FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

#218

Post by jraph »

eviks wrote: post #216
jraph wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The comments on this page are a complete cesspool. I noticed this. I'm quite appalled. Definitely outside the usual HN standards. I suspect the very idea of self-hosting one's code instead of using GitHub is triggrering many people beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for. Are people projecting their GitHub FOMO? Are people thinking that the value of the GitHub they cherish decreases…

> beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for. Since you're ignoring the reasons by calling them unreasonable, the armchair psychology alternative won't help get you what you love

I'm not calling people or reasons unreasonable, but the level at which they are triggered. And I stand by my point: being mad that someone chooses to self host is unreasonable and no amount of accusing me of doing armchair psychology will change anything to this.

Re: FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

#219

Post by nine_k »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #162

The comments on this page are a complete cesspool. A full third of them complaining about the anti-bot protection mascot (yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it), others splitting the finest of hairs over software development groups and company politics, and more. Self-hosting is generally good, well done to FFmpeg. Many large projects self-host, and my own ex-company has physical servers in the city we work at t…

> 1980s protocol

TCP is even older; so what? It works, as does email. It's merely a transport layer.

What is required is a well-defined standard to encapsulate relevant data into it: PR definitions, code review comments, approval / rejection votes. This all could be a zipped JSON attachment, for instance.

The code change proper can continue be passed in the patch format. Or the whole thing could arrive via an exposed API endpoint, or even be pushed by git protocol.

A tool could interpret the extracted data and update a database that powers a nice GUI / TUI, and controls a CI/CD interface.

(Now if I only had time to properly design and implement that.)

Re: FFmpeg moves to Forgejo

#220

Post by LegionMammal978 »

jraph wrote: post #190
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #162

The comments on this page are a complete cesspool. A full third of them complaining about the anti-bot protection mascot (yes, it's a cartoon character; get over it), others splitting the finest of hairs over software development groups and company politics, and more. Self-hosting is generally good, well done to FFmpeg. Many large projects self-host, and my own ex-company has physical servers in the city we work at t…

> The comments on this page are a complete cesspool. I noticed this. I'm quite appalled. Definitely outside the usual HN standards. I suspect the very idea of self-hosting one's code instead of using GitHub is triggrering many people beyond reasonable levels for reasons I'd love to get an explanation for. Are people projecting their GitHub FOMO? Are people thinking that the value of the GitHub they cherish decreases…

I do have a sense of unease about most smaller hosting services and self-hosting solutions, in that I don't trust them to stay up in the long term, once no one is left to care about projects on them, or at least not about the old versions. (This isn't so big an issue for something as big as FFmpeg, but I'm talking about the general case.) Just try to download some old version of a minor library from the late 90s or early 2000s: unless it's been continuously using the same source control repo, the odds are better than not that the files disappeared during the intervening decades.

In contrast, whatever its faults, I fully expect public repos on GitHub to last for the next 10 years, likely the next 20, barring active removal by the author. (The biggest medium-term risk is a "GitHub is evil, take down all your repos" campaign a la Reddit.) Of course, it's not foolproof, the only way to get that would be to replicate the project in dozens of places, but I find it much better than the old status quo of files slipping away once forgotten.

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