1. I don't believe anyone in their right mind thinks that ffmpeg is still maintained and developed by a single person, and definitely not by Fabrice 2. Spaghetti code or not matters very little, especially in the beginning, before you even know or understand the scope of the project and what it can become in the future. You can indeed refactor code when you understand the requirements better, and it's great that it's what the community did. I still think it was the right call to start with the spaghetti mess to not be dragged down by potential future problems that might never materialise because your project became something very different from what you originally had in mind