[mythtv-users] Notice to Schedules Direct users

[Stuart Morgan]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 2:54 PM, William Jacoby <bonelifer at gmail.com> 
wrote:
> From that "Actions may be taken in future to actively block the use of 
> this 'JSON' grabber because of the damage it may cause to the integrity 
> of the MythTV database."  Elaborate? How does it hurt a mythtv 
> installation. 

Future schema changes may fail because of columns added to tables that would 
not otherwise be there. Data may be inserted in an incorrect format causing 
problems for the code that uses it. Features may fail because MythTV is not 
able to act upon data as it is inserted. MythTV cannot even know that any new 
data has been inserted because it was entirely circumvented.

Future versions of MythTV won't even use an external database, so the grabber 
simply won't be able to function.

> Are you going to require packagers to include some sort 
> of non-deletable binary to enforce this policy of actively blocking 
> users from using their systems the way they want?

While users are free to use their systems as they want, we will always 
discourage them from doing something which will negatively effect the 
performance of MythTV.

When you experience bugs as a result of using this unofficial grabber, are you 
going to recognise that you caused those same issues yourself? Or are you 
going to come to the MythTV developers looking for support, wasting our time 
and expecting us to help you clean up your mess?

What about the users who are even less technically minded than yourself, who 
blindly follow the advice they read on some web page somewhere about this 
great new grabber? Should we not try to protect people from shooting 
themselves in the foot? Who will they blame? Certainly not themselves, 
invariably MythTV will be at fault, MythTV will be badmouthed and MythTV 
developers will be the villains. If they really do have the skills to 
understand what they are doing, then they'll have no trouble working around 
the protections we put in place.

MythTV utilises a widely accepted standard for importing guide data, it's used 
by all MythTV users outside North America, it's called XMLTV. It's the 
direction we are hoping to move Schedules Direct users. We're working with 
both the Schedules Direct and XMLTV teams to provide access to their JSON feed 
through a standard, drop-in, XMLTV grabber. For now though, we are asking that 
Schedules Direct continue to use the existing service, which they are able to 
do without interruption.

-- 
Stuart Morgan
MythTV