[mythtv] Development of MythTV

[Henk Poley]

Big mail, big quotes, ah well...

Op woensdag 19 mei 2004 16:51, schreef Kirby Vandivort:
> On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 01:59:31PM +0200, Henk Poley wrote:
> > In response to some possible troll on the Wiki (don't flame, this mail is
> > not in any way related to that) I have the following question.
> >
> > What are the plans/ideas/roadmap IRT MythTV?
> >
> > The troll(?) said there is no need for, a show mouse cursor toggle,
> > FireWire support (think home videos), a C# client running on other
> > operating systems than linux and some other things.
> >
> > What is the 'official' stance on this by 'the developers'?
>
> I think that it is safe to say the following (and I'm not being critical
> or harsh, or responding about any wish in particular... just stating
> reality as I've observed it over the past year or so):
>
> For the most part, each developer has their own ideas of what they want
> mythtv to do for them.  There is no official roadmap.  Each developer
> (the people who are willing to actually write the code) decides what
> they want to spend their own time on.  Random users can make up wish
> lists from now until 2030, but someone has to be willing to write the
> code, and the developers aren't (in general; there are exceptions)
> in the business of writing code that they don't personally care about.

Thank you for saying that, this was (and is) more or less my opinion on open 
source too. On the other hand, I then just don't grok why the 'anonymous 
troll' is so angry/reactive to a bunch of guys collecting user requests, and 
putting them under a name like 'things you can contribute'.

From what I've seen in other projects, most developers aren't so solipsistic 
as you say though. They do read feature requests and try to see if it fits 
into the existing framework. Maybe we are missing some overview so it seems 
as if users are just buggering for useless features?

On the other hand the developers are not that 'loose' as suggested by above 
mentioned anonymous user, that they would blindly create patches for 
suggestions they saw on a website.

> Isaac obviously has the final word on what actually goes into CVS, but
> the bottom line is that the developers are writing code to satisfy their
> own itches.

May I then ask Isaac what are more or less the things a patch or new feature 
(etc.) must comply to, other than the obvious 'should be written correctly' 
and 'shouldn't break anything'? IMHO, MythTV is about "the mythical 
convergence", meaning bundleing of all media (video, music, news, photo's) 
into one networked system.

What is your opinion to that Isaac? Or anyone else with CVS write access for 
this project.

Would those ideas mean that there is "no need for, a show mouse cursor toggle, 
FireWire support (think home videos), a C# client running on other operating 
systems than linux and some other things." among other things? (that was 
quoting myself, but okay)

> Due to the beauty of Open Source, anyone that wants feature X is
> completely free to download the source and start writing.  Once they have
> the feature working as they wish, they are free to send it mythtv-dev's
> way for inclusion into the CVS tree.  If it makes it, great.  If not,
> they've got the feature themselves and are free to do with it as they
> wish.

I don't know if you are aware, but there are possible improvements to MythTV 
that take a bit more of teamwork to get finished. Most of the time these kind 
of things are not really "needed!!" but would make huge difference to the 
users.

For example one of them is to let the backends handle the file shareing of 
MythMusic and MythVideo too, possibly much like the way the it is handled 
with LiveTV and recordings playback. I do not imply we should fork Samba or 
something, but on the other hand we could let MythTV work together with Samba 
for better security and better intergration (aka convergence).

I do know other examples. Do I and others have 'permission' to write these 
down in a public place without someone rapidly removing it?  Free speech and 
such....

*sigh*

	Henk Poley <><


PS: Sorry if most if this should have gone directly to the 'anonymous user'. I 
do think most of these things are rather important questions to be answered 
from time to time for a project.