[mythtv-users] TapeWorm Beta 4 - new features, and now, fewer bugs!

Steven Adeff adeffs.mythtv at gmail.com
Thu Apr 6 18:02:52 UTC 2006


On 4/6/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 01:08:40PM -0400, Isaac Richards wrote:
> > I'm opposed to someone using my mailing list for user support for a non-free
> > application,
>
> He wasn't.  He made a one-time announcement of a program which works
> with your software to provide a function which your software does not,
> announcing it in arguably the only forum where it *is* pertinent.
>
> That a couple people saw fit to reply and ask him questions does not in
> any way recharacterise his original posting as "using [your] [sic]
> mailing lists for user support" for his application.

True, but, he did respond to the posts in such a manner as to change
the intent of the original email. Had he, after people responded on
list, asked people to kindly email him off list with their issues, or
better yet told people to email him off list with their issues, I am
willing to bet Isaac would not have issue with the announcement
emails.



> >                 and essentially using this list as free advertising for that
> > application.  I regularly remove people from the list that post 'for sale'
> > ads - I don't see this as being much, if any, different from that.
>
> Clearly.
>
> But that sort of insular attitude -- along, I might say, with the
> way you overreact to many other things which happen in "your" mythtv
> community -- is the sort of attitude which causes forks in the long run.
> (Mythweb was independent before it was a supplied module, was it not?
> Was it first announced to the world here?)
>
> It's just happened to Schily; projects get forked because the primary
> maintainer is an asshole.  Or even is *thought* to be an asshole.
>
> It really sucks that you designed and implemented a project that's so
> popular that there are lots of non-hackers who want to use it and be
> involved with it, and that you hosted up a wiki and it got a million
> hits in a couple weeks. These things are all horrible.
>
> But regardless of what your opinions of these facts are, if your
> interpersonal reactions to people about the facts don't calm the hell
> down a bit, you're going to make yourself irrelevant.
>
> You already don't like me, so I don't figure it matters much whether I
> tell you this, and somebody certainly ought to.


Communities need rules. Isaac created this community, and as such set
the basic rules by which it will run. Members of the community can
agree upon rules by which they will abide on top of these basic rules.
If you don't agree with these rules, feel free to create your own
mythtv support list/forum/wiki and endow it with the rules you wish to
have, or none at all. The simple fact is we are all participating in
Isaac's world while we are here and thus must obey his rules. Isaac
has done a good job of making his rules as simple and basic as can be
to achieve the goals he set forth in creating the community and has
been pretty fair and even handed in excercising his authority.

If you feel his excercise of authority has been out of bound, perhaps
you would like to help enforce the rules he has set for the community?
Perhaps we need Isaac to let us know his basic rules, put them on the
wiki's page for the mailinglists, and practice self-policing, letting
users know when they come into the realm of violating these rules,
allowing Isaac to only have to step in if after being warned such
abuse of the rules continues?

--
Steve


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