Microsoft employee:
Hi, This is a high priority ticket and the FFmpeg version is currently used in a highly visible product in Microsoft. We have customers experience issues with Caption during Teams Live Event. Please help
Maintainer’s comment on twitter:
After politely requesting a support contract from Microsoft for long term maintenance, they offered a one-time payment of a few thousand dollars instead.
This is unacceptable.
And further:
The lesson from the xz fiasco is that investments in maintenance and sustainability are unsexy and probably won’t get a middle manager their promotion but pay off a thousandfold over many years.
But try selling that to a bean counter
A trillion dollar company using your product in one of their flagship products without a support contract can fuck right off.
Microsoft should be putting up money via the support contract to support the creators in maintaining and further development of their product.
A one off payment might be technically sufficient, it is not ethically or morally sufficient. And to put it in terms shareholders understand… support contract is cheaper than the cost of an alternative.
