The qualification tasks required of students in order to participate in FFmpeg’s Summer of Code program has finally afforded me the opportunity to create a “Small FFmpeg Tasks” page on the MultimediaWiki. Of course, the small tasks list was originally chartered to qualify students, but it need not be limited to that purpose. As I wrote on the page, it can be used for anyone who needs a good starting point for FFmpeg hacking. Further, it could be used for someone who has been away from the codebase and needs an exercise to motivate re-familiarization.

I have this — perhaps unfounded — vision that there are many lurkers out there, watching the FFmpeg project from a distance, on or off the notoriously abrasive mailing lists, hoping one day to get involved somehow, but not knowing exactly how to break in. The small tasks list is a great place to start. Maybe you don’t feel all that comfortable with what you have seen during your lurkings, perhaps because you can’t figure out what is meant with this whole “top-posting” thing for which n00bs are routinely savaged. If that’s you, you can always email me privately about getting started. I will (probably, depending on the day) be happy to tutor you on the basics for contributing some code. Email address is on the side bar.

FFmpeg is open source, licensed largely under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL), though certain parts, for various reasons, are General Public License (GPL), version 2. There are certain provisions about when you must provide source code if you use the program. Some programs do not follow these rules.

We have started tracking these violators in the FFmpeg Hall of Shame. Each violator is listed with a link to its case in the FFmpeg issue tracker. We’re actively trying to work with all violators to resolve these issues. The Hall of Shame seems to be reserved for particularly unresponsive violators.