[mythtv-users] RANT: MythTV has a *horrible* end user experience.

[Ronald Frazier]

>  Hmmm.  Isn't that saying that these professional programmers who don't
>  want to do their day job at home are just simply expecting the MythTV
>  devs to code things to their liking out of pure laziness?  Or perhaps
>  they feel their time is more valuable than that of the MythTV devs.
>  Perhaps it's something I haven't considered, and if so, I'd love to
>  learn what that is so I can better understand the attitude.  IMHO,
>  anyone with programming skills who uses FOSS has two options: 1) learn
>  to live with the things they don't like about the software or 2) fix it
>  themselves.  There is no "3) complain until someone fixes it for them."
>  Note that 2) may actually be, 2) solicit feedback for a proposed
>  approach--with explicit mention of your willingness to do the work--and
>  then fix it themselves, but this differs from "complain until..."

Bad attitude. There are so many reasons why a programmer wouldn't contribute.

First is lack of time. I'm not sure what your age and family situation
is, but as you get older and get more responsibility it can be
difficult for some people to work in the time. I've made my own small
contributions to myth in the last few months, but I have to admit that
for someone whose experience with linux over the last decade has only
been minor, the simple fact of learning all the bits of linux
necessary to setup a mythbox and debugging all the obscure things that
pop up can be quite time consuming. Add into that figuring out all the
features in myth, what the many many settings do, etc and just
maintaining a mythbox can be a job in itself. Never mind learning the
huge codebase and actually contributing. And never mind actually
having other hobbies beside programming. I'm just glad I'm lucky
enough to have a wife who lets me have hours on end to myself to work
on all the projects I want. I've seen many a wife that are a LOT more
demanding than that.

In addition, you also have contractual obligations. Would you want
someone contributing code to mythtv and then their employer coming in
and trying to lay claim to their contributions...and maybe trying to
lay claim to some of the other stuff in myth along with it? You could
say "let them try...they have no basis...they'd never win", but would
you volunteer to handle the legal aspects of it for all of us?
Sometimes the best contribution a person can make is to keep their
hands out of it.


>  Call me elitist, but I'll gladly write off suggestions from any of the
>  b) users who don't seem to be actively contributing to open source
>  projects somewhere.  (Not accusing anyone of falling into this category,
>  but just making a general statement.)

Well, if you insist.....that is pretty elitist. It's also an attitude
that doesn't do the reputation of open source a whole lot of good.

-- 
Ron