lwn.net/Articles/888752/#Comments says in part

> Kastner said that he was "less concerned with regards to malicious litigation (although that is a valid concern)", but more with the day-to-day problems with not having a single organization where contributions can go and that can hold assets (e.g. hardware, copyrights) for the project directly.

I thought SPI was acting as an umbrella organization for this sort of thing.

@FaheemMitha for some of it, yes; see spi-inc.org/projects/services

One notable exception is copyrights; in Debian, individual contributors can use the SFC for that.

@StephenKitt But it can accept donations and hold assets on behalf of Debian, correct?

> SPI will accept donations and hold funds on behalf of associated projects.

Maybe the holding is the problem.

@FaheemMitha yes, most of Debian’s funds and assets are held by SPI

> Substantial equipment, software or other assets valued at over $300 which an associated project purchases with SPI funds are owned by SPI.

@StephenKitt But Kastner's comment suggests such a thing is lacking.

@FaheemMitha lwn.net/ml/debian-vote/… explains it better

and jcc’s platform gives other reasons

@StephenKitt So Debian wants to actually own stuff directly?

@FaheemMitha some people want Debian to own stuff directly

@StephenKitt I see. I suppose it would be better.

Though if Debian formally existed, it could be sued, as people have pointed out.

It's hard to sue something that doesn't exist.

The main issues aren’t about ownership (I’m not aware of any issues between Debian and the SPI; Debian members can be SPI members simply by asking, and many SPI directors are Debian members), but legal exposure: work done for Debian exposes the individual contributor, because there is no organisation.

I suppose, for example, there is nothing stopping SPI with walking off with Debian's assets.

@StephenKitt I thought SPI was also an umbrella for that, but I'm much more uncertain about that. I know the Software Conservancy has such a function for its members.

@FaheemMitha yup, SFC does provide some liability protection; SPI doesn’t

@StephenKitt OK. Still surprised that discussion doesn't even mention SPI.

@FaheemMitha huh? it’s mentioned in the second email in the thread: lwn.net/ml/debian-vote/…

@StephenKitt I meant the LWN article.

@FaheemMitha ah, right; Jake could have mentioned it in the summary, yes

Anyone using mediainfo or the like? Or is there a way to get ffmpeg to print shell friendly information?

I am using mediainfo - but have to use a template file. Would like to do without.

I haven't actually used any but I was looking into getting metadata a lot recently and it seems like eyed3 and the variants are the way to go

most of, if not all of the media manager tools use that

OK. Thanks! Issue with ffmpeg is that it is not very parsing friendly. mediainfo is better but has some quirks.

E.g. can not get mediainfo --Inform="Video;%StreamSize%Audio;%StreamSize%" ... and the like to work - it only show first spec.

If I use the file:// options it works though, but would like to do it without a spec file.

It has a very wide option range in the Inform spec. so that is good

I think eyed3 is specifically for mp3s but I saw a bunch of variants that seem to be targeted towards movie files as well

Looks like D3 is more for ID3 tags

Found I can use a heredoc for the --Inform= option to mediainfo, - that makes it simpler

For what ever reason show bot Audio; and Video; when using heredoc or cat but not when specifying as option directly.

OK as well: mediainfo --Inform="$(printf 'Video;%%StreamSize%% \nAudio;%%StreamSize%%')"

mediainfo has a lot of options for fine grained info mediainfo --Inform-Options