[mythtv-users] What's appropriate to use/distribute in MythTV

[Robert McNamara]

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 6:11 PM, Jean-Yves Avenard <jyavenard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You sound like my wife. "If you don't know why I'm upset, I'm
> certainly not going to tell you"
>

I'm happy to tell you.

> I would love you to explain how it is inappropriate to distribute any
> of the stuff I've been distributing... From either a legal or moral
> point of view for that matter.
>

When you "asked" about your backport on the dev list way back at the
beginning of backportfest 2009, you were a) told it was a bad idea,
and b) asked not to associate it in any way with the project.
Instead, four months later, we find that the myth users list has
become the official Jean-Yves backport support forum. Those of us
providing support on Freenode for official versions of mythTV are
constantly finding that some patch you have applied makes your
backport unstable and unpredictable.  When your ticket for your
backport was closed, did you not figure out that further patches that
are specifically designed for that backport would be ill advised?
Instead, we find ourselves four months later where you attach a patch
for your pet project to each ticket you touch.  How do you think this
makes you look to the people in the position to commit your tickets?

> Why is it that you feel it's a bad thing to add stuff in the code that
> the mythtv core developers won't endorse or more likely don't have
> time to look at?
> I just don't get it...
>

You can do anything you like, but if you think that anything you
distribute is a stable version of MythTV any more, you are sorely
mistaken.  *Please* do not respond with the predictable "Well it's
working great for me and others."  The *only* version of myth which is
considered stable by the rest of us is that which exists in -fixes.
If you think that we have not been burdened by your "work," you are
also mistaken.  I personally have spent *hours* trying to help someone
with bizarre behaviors of their mythbox because *whoops*, Jean-Yves
decided to include tickets that he thought were a good idea.  It's
irritating and I and others are sick of it.  *Nobody cares* if you
want to be your own personal Myth dev, but *please*, for the love of
god, set up your own infrastructure and take it there.

> Just like all successful open source project, once they achieve
> critical distribution mass, they tend to live a life of their own and
> go beyond whatever the original author ever intended.
> It's a sign of success.
>

That's fine.  It doesn't mean that you're still not bound by the rules
of that project when you exist within its ecosystem.  If you want to
provide support for your unofficial, unstable version of myth, then
you should set up your own forum and do it there.  Have you given even
a shred of thought to how you appear to people who are *not* merely
users of MythTV?  You have ignored *every* request that has been made
of you by the devs, and only continued to compound it.  Let's look at
some of the stuff included in your fork of MythTV:

- Backport of VDPAU that you were *specifically* asked not to
distribute and not to associate with this project.

- Optional HD-PVR support - Why in God's name would you distribute
something that will break people's database and make a clean upgrade
to .22 impossible?  What upgrade path do you plan to offer those
people?

- Various patches which have not been committed which have resulted in
hours of wasted troubleshooting time in IRC.

How is it you *expect* to be treated, Jean-Yves?  You have ignored and
overridden several of the core developers, decided that you are better
equipped to choose what code is ready for inclusion in MythTV, and
provided 11000 people (last month) with a poison pill that neither
behaves like stable mythTV nor (in some cases) can it be easily or
cleanly upgraded to the forthcoming version of MythTV.  Would you like
me to join in telling you how valuable and important you are?

> As for the usefulness of what I distribute, over 11000 people (last
> month) disagree with you.

I don't deny that people crave what you're distributing.  I know that
people are eager to see some of the new features to be found in trunk.
 Out of those 11,000 people, how many of them have Myth commit access?
 How many of them feel that your backports and applying of unapproved
patches is a fantastic idea?  How many of them read the patches that
are applied?  You sell your packages as though they were a stable
product.  They're not.  What's more, in a thread having *nothing* to
do with this topic, you felt the need to passive-aggressively hint at
comments I have made to you in the past.  So you tell me, what kind of
community member comes into someone else's house and disrespects their
rules?  If you come in to my house and I tell you we take our shoes
off at the door, do you stomp in with your muddy boots because you
don't agree?  When you're on these lists, you're in someone else's
house.  Is it okay to argue with the rules because you don't like
them, even though they've been debated a thousand times?  No.  At
*that's* what open source is about.  It's the freedom to take what you
want if you don't like it, and do what you will with it.  As they say
in the song, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.  If
you stay, you follow the rules of this project.  If you want to be
respected by the people who presumably you want to commit your work,
that means learning to work with them and not brush aside their
opinion.  If you don't agree, that's okay too, but you can't have it
both ways.  Do it your way, but don't do it here.

Robert