The FFmpeg vs. Libav War Continues In Debian Land

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The FFmpeg vs. Libav War Continues In Debian Land

An FFmpeg package is closer to reaching Debian after years of being rejected in favor of its forked libav alternative, but not all are happy with FFmpeg's reappearance...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTc1MTQ

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Considering FFmpeg has been taking a proverbial dump in Ftp Incoming, along with Openjpeg 2.0, and Libpng shitting the bed at 1.2.x [due to lagging issues of upgrading packages now going on 18 months] it's not surprising that those I've mentioned and much more continue to languish, while asinine pet projects get pushed right through.

JPEG, PNG and AV should be a top priority, along with PERL 6 still shitting the bed in experimental while a host of packages are broken on it. All distros need these base packages. Hell all operating systems need them.

[jimbohale]

This is why random open source projects that are community ran will always fail. Now we have two projects with slight differences and people are expected to support both of them. Such a disgrace. This is a perfect example of why the Linux desktop isn't taken seriously, people. Projects such as GNOME are company-ran far more than community (red hat) so they are bound to be more organized, but some people still want to fork it and divide the community even more. You can't have perfect interoperability with split projects like this, and nobody wants to use broken software (which breaks when shit like this happens). I hope that one day people will realize this and companies like red hat will expand even more (obviously open source, but also company-driven). If it doesn't stop, the Linux desktop will never be anything more than a hobbyist's desktop. If I open my Linux desktop and there are random problems that exist, while fixable, not everyone knows how to fix them (in fact, very few compared to the amount of people who use computers and that's how it will always be) nor cares enough to fix them.

This application randomly crashes? Oh, I have to use this patched version of this random dependency? Fuck that, and I can guarantee most users feel the same way. Forking projects unless *absolutely necessary* as was the case in Xorg vs XFree86 should not be as common in mainstream distributions.

[not.sure]

This is why random open source projects that are community ran will always fail.

There is no fail. Everybody wants ffmpeg. It's just that the debian multimedia team is notoriously on the wrong side of history.

[magika]

There is no fail. Everybody wants ffmpeg. It's just that the debian multimedia team is notoriously on the wrong side of history.

This.
Debian is strangely popular distro despite it acting full retard. Its like a poison to linux community.

[neuralgya]

This is why random open source projects that are community ran will always fail.

Err...like linux kernel? The biggest collaborative project in the history of computing?. Failed? It all started as " open source projects that is community ran".

And on the other side, Debian is a distro not driven by any corporation, and we like it like this. In the end, all choices are made thinking in stability and usability. We're not forced to use any software just because our wisdom CEO farted and had the "next big thing idea"

[neuralgya]

This.
Debian is strangely popular distro despite it acting full retard. Its like a poison to linux community.

Debian is popular because:

* It's very stable.
* It's only interest is to provide a free and full OS to everyone.
* You can use it easily in servers, desktops and embedded. The same version. Debian oficially supports 12 archs.
* It's easy to customize and provide customized meta-distros to your customers.


Despite this, yes, maybe debian multimedia mantainers are wrong, maybe not. Anyway, for _years_, Christian Marillat has been packaging ffmpeg for all versions of Debian.

[birdie]

This whole situation sucks big time.

Like the one with LibreOffice vs OpenOffice, like KDE vs TDE, etc.

I mean we don't have that many dedicated open source developers, we have many software titles to be taken of, yet these little resources that we have are spread and wasted.

[jimbohale]

Err...like linux kernel? The biggest collaborative project in the history of computing?. Failed? It all started as " open source projects that is community ran".

And on the other side, Debian is a distro not driven by any corporation, and we like it like this. In the end, all choices are made thinking in stability and usability. We're not forced to use any software just because our wisdom CEO farted and had the "next big thing idea"

The Linux kernel is ran by Linus who's job it is is to make things not suck. Literal job, i.e. his livelihood depends on it.

[kaprikawn]

What do the other major distros use out of interest, FFmpeg or libav?