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

[Brian Wood]

On Thursday 21 May 2009 11:34:45 David Brodbeck wrote:
> To me this looks like essentially an interim problem.  It happened
> because the appearance of several new and exciting hardware devices
> coincided with the Myth developers' decision to rip apart trunk to
> switch to a new toolkit. This made it difficult for people to use trunk,
> and made 0.22 look like a very, very long way off, but there was still a
> need for code that supported the new hardware.  Jean-Yves stepped in to
> fill that void.  When 0.22 eventually ships his fork will no longer be
> needed and this conflict will go away.  If the developers find him
> annoying they should get 0.22 done, hopefully before yet another toolkit
> comes out and they rip it all apart again. ;)

I'm sure the devs are working as hard as they can to get 0.22 done. I 
certainly wouldn't want a half-baked release, and the MythTV approach to 
releases, without artificial deadlines or outside pressures hurrying the 
work, is refreshing in the computer world.

However, Jaques IS providing a service that seems to be wanted by a lot of 
folks. While I doubt that the 11,000 figure indicates actual users of his 
patches, it certainly does indicate a great deal of interest. Perhaps those 
downloading but not actually using his patches will be inspired to come up 
with something better.

The complaints about Jaque's work seem to center around taking up the devs 
time, and it seems Jaques is doing what he can to prevent users bothering the 
devs with any problems related to his own work. The argument that he is 
consuming computing resources rings hollow in the face of repeated refusals 
to accept the donation of funds or hardware.

We're all presumably adults here, and bickering will solve nothing. The 
mainstream devs are entitled to a little bit of a sense of ownership of the 
mainstream code, but only a little, the nature of Open Source precludes 
anything more than that.

Let's all conceed that the work of the mainstrean devs, and Jaque's 
contributions, all have a place in the overall project. The arguments on both 
sides seem well-considered, nobody is trying to shoot down anybody's work.

Most of all, this is a USER's list, arguments about how the project should be 
developed belong elsewhere. Jaques is trying to fill a need that USER's have, 
in a way that doesn't distract the mainstream devs from their own work. 
Perhaps he has not been totally successful,  but he has made it clear several 
times that he does not wish to interfere with the mainstream project at all.

Most users who have an HD-PVR sitting useless on the shelf or, worse, running 
under Windows, probably care more about support for the device than any new 
user interface, user's priorities are always different from those of the 
developers, but without the devs foresight the project wouldn't be as 
advanced as it is.

Can't we all just get along?

-- 
beww
beww at beww.org