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

Another Sillyname anothersname at googlemail.com
Thu May 21 02:11:24 UTC 2009


2009/5/21 Robert McNamara <robert.mcnamara at gmail.com>:
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

Jean-Yves

I'm not a developer, I do hang around this list and ask question when
I need to and help out when I can.

I must say I'm a little bothered when I find the following on your
page here.....

http://avenard.com/media/MythTV_&_VDPAU/MythTV_&_VDPAU.html

----------------------------------------------------------
Add VDPAU support to MythTV 0.21

The MythTV developers made it clear that VDPAU support would only be
added to the oncoming 0.22 version.

I didn’t want to wait ; It seemed to me that 0.22 is a long way from
being released and would give me a very low WAF. So I backported the
VDPAU 0.22 changes to 0.21-fixes.

You then go on to talk about your own ubuntu repo and how your patches
can be applied...

Then you have some FAQ's one of which reads....

Q: I still can’t get it to work, can you help?

A: I always do my best to provide the maximum of information possible.
If you require personalised assistance you can hire me or consider
donating. Please understand that this is still a hobby, I’m not a fan
of tech support and I do need to make a living.

Alternatively, the MythTV distribution list is a good place to ask
questions and get support.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I'm sorry if your offended by this but my take on that is....

I'll do some work based on others code, if it doesn't work for you and
you really want me to fix it you'll have to pay me, else go bother the
people on the mailing list who said it shouldn't be backported.

----------------------------------------------------------------

The reason for rules is they provide structure, if someone started to
mess around with code changes you made, distributed them to others,
then said if you need help go back to the original source (i.e. you)
you'd likely be pretty pi**ed.  Having 11,000 downloads last month
would certainly give you enough users to justify your own fork, or is
it you don't want to support 11,000 users?


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list