Lex Fridman

So here, looking at perplexity, FFmpeg and LiveAV split in 2011, mainly over project governance, leadership style, and development processes, not because of a fundamental technical disagreement.

FFmpeg effectively absorbed libav's work, while libav withered most distributions and developers moved back to FFmpeg.

Yeah, that was a weird, from a user's perspective, that was a weird experience.

Because, you know, I'm a Linux user, so, you know, whether it's Ubuntu and so on, all of a sudden, I think for a little bit,

Bantu, I feel like, am I remembering correctly, switched to LibAV.

I was like, what is happening?

So you get to feel the ripple effects of the different internal debates that are happening.

Well, my main concern, I understand, and I think looking at the long history, it's all for the good.

But I am concerned because there's so few humans that are critical to the success of open source projects that I have seen it be a psychological toll on folks.

and sometimes leads to burnout.

So you have these incredible people that are at the core of open source projects.

There is a moment that happens, because what is the motivation of doing it?

Ultimately it's because you're passionate about it and it makes you happy.

Then at a certain point you wake up and it's like, this has been a bit too much.

heat from the drama.

So like at the at the project level, the project continues and often flourishes.

But sometimes there's these individual humans.

They're just like, I've had enough.

No, for sure.

I wonder how we help that because those people are so important.