[vlc-devel] [RFC] Dropping support for OS X 10.5

[Felix Kühne]

Hello,

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 2:36 PM, SciFi <sci-fi at hush.ai> wrote:
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> On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 06:29:38 -0500, SciFi wrote:
>> […]
>> (For example, take a look on these _current_ PPC projects:
>> <http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/>
>> <http://www.floodgap.com/software/> what else they are doing
>> <https://aurorafox.wordpress.com/>
>> …and more…)
>
> Of course there are all-kinds of Non-Intel systems
> out there still being used.
Sure, there are also Amiga projects still out there.

> So let me add another example to this list,
> the FreeBSD PPC system:
> <http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc.html>
You are welcome to use it on your PowerPC-based Macs. VLC will
continue to run on it because the FreeBSD community still supports
this platform with current compilers and runtimes. Apple does not care
about 10.5 on PPC at all anymore, so there are important features
missing that we need to move on.


> Because of this droppage of 32-bit Macs,
> that there _are_ 64-bit PowerMacs out there,
> but you've dropped ALL PPC-Macs just-because you've
> decided to drop 10.5?
No, we drop support for OS X 10.5 on any platform and 32bit support on
10.6. There are 64bit PowerPC-based Macs. I own and run one myself.
However, due to the hardware implications of the PowerPC G5 chip,
there is zero speed benefit in doing a 64bit build of VLC. That's why
we never released one after internal testing.
The PowerPC G5 is limited to the same old, no-longer maintained OS X
version as the 32bit G4, so it is dropped as well. in fact, there is
zero difference in supporting the G4 or the G5.

> I am also worried about the implications of saying
> "run the earlier version of our app"
> which puts them at a Second-Class User status
> (regardless having the same fixes as the "latest" version).
Of course it will be a 2nd class citizen. After 2.1 will be out, I
expect maybe one or two more releases for this platform and then we
will probably stop supporting it entirely, mostly because there is
nothing left to fix. VLC 2.0.x won't turn into a rotten something
after that. It will continue to run nicely like 0.9.10 on OS X 10.4,
0.8.6i on on 10.3 or even 0.7.x on 10.2.

VLC for Apple platforms is developed by a tiny team, being David,
Sebastien and me, so we need to schedule our resources and it is way
more important to provide the best VLC possible to the vast majority
of users.
There will be some left behind, about 0.5 % of our user base. This is
sad, but there is absolutely nothing we can do about that unless some
PowerPC dude shows up and continues to maintain it, like it happened
with Mozilla Firefox.

I think this is all I can say about this decision. Thanks for your feedback!

Best regards,

Felix