[vlc-devel] Update on the VLC project

[Pierre Ynard]

> > Sounds like the technical decision process is going fine then, no
> > need to arbitrate this.........
> 
> I beg to disagree. The fight started on a yes/no on a libvlc.so bump.

And that wasn't a decision, but a discussion. If you want to suggest
a technical discussion facilitation committee, that's sort of different.

> You keep insinuating that I am not doing my job, and I do not like it,
> to be honest. If I take too much responsability, people complain that
> this is not "my project". If I don't, I get criticized too.

Well I was talking about a hypothetical committee with a focused
purpose, not about you.

> Since when the lack of roadmap has been a major issue? This is not a
> student project anymore. People can commit to the things they want.
> Moreover, seeing the vout rework that was done, I would say that we are
> able to have a quite good roadmap for a volunteer project.

It might not be major and people still commit their contributions, but
it has an impact on shipping out releases with consistent features.

> How dare you that we lack orientation for PR/legal action, when we do a
> lot on that? We never had more PR than this year and we do a lot on the
> Legal side: we have taken down more than 50 websites, we have done a lot
> on the trademarks side, on the patent and on the DRM side: we ceased
> HADOPI.

I agree that there's a lot of action, I just don't see the orientation.
Getting more visibility is great but that seems like the obvious
thing to do, same for shutting down scams. Okay for HADOPI, that's
interesting; but I learned about it in the news. And take the appstore:
it's good to review the updates to the ToS, but I'm not aware of any
development. Yeah, as you say, noone blocked me from proposing something
about it, and that's just what I did back then; but people didn't
follow up, nothing was decided and nothing was done. As several people
acknowledged it lately, my speaking up alone isn't enough to accomplish
something.

> Same for fostering our third-party developer? If you went to the forum
> from time to time, you would see that the libVLC section has a lot of
> discussion. And as you might have seen, I have spent weeks of work to do
> the relicensing.

The association does a really good job with the administrative stuff,
with carrying out the relicensing for example. It might just be me but I
wish it was clearer where the licensing of the modules is going. Also,
we can't even agree among ourselves about the point of the lua API,
features get removed and we have to put them back in a rush because
we're not sure what we want to do with the API functions. We have a
crappy website for lua scripts, I don't even know where it comes from,
and it's hardly advertised on the website. I fondly remember you saying
at past VDDs that an extension ecosystem is a killer feature, but
then...

> About the lack of management of personal conflicts, I think I do enough
> of this, and this thread is a proof.

You've been reluctant to do it, last times too. But it's not just about
you. When I was the only one openly talking about the conflict last
week, it sure didn't feel like people were doing enough. Besides the
interested parties, only 4 people got involv^W^Wposted in the thread:
me, you with short small reminders, Felix who made a point not to take a
stand, and Frédéric who simply asked Rémi to stay. That doesn't sound
like enough. Talking about problems and giving your opinion, even just
showing that you care, is not hard.

> You are unfair and not respectful to other people work. And noone has
> blocked anyone to help and propose anything.

I don't mean for you to take it so personally. But are you saying that
proposing something is enough?

> > To finish on this topic, I'll come back on a "committee decision"
> > that happened in the past: when the association decided, without
> > consulting the rest of the developers, without getting the blessing
> > of the lead developer, that the licensing questions around Apple's
> > ToS were a gray area, and that this justified giving a green light
> > to the iOS port, leading to the whole App Store fiasco.
> 
> Once again, you are rewriting the history. This is not what happened.

Sorry, my mistake then, that's just my impression.

> And, as you perfectly know, VideoLAN did not publish the application,
> because of this gray area.

You think I perfectly know? Apparently I don't actually know. And that's
my point: I don't know because the most I heard about it before it
started was reading a line or two from you on IRC about gray area, and
I had to infer the rest. Just like nobody came to me about the lengthy
preparation of this email, I had to ask about it in query, and then ask
again to get the gist of it. Repeated a couple times, this kind of
things grows distrust.

> > In other words... you've kept people holding their breaths for more
> > than
> 
> Absolutely noone blocked you from doing anything.

Uuuh I think I did all I could. It didn't depend on me.

> I therefore advise you to request the non-profit organisation to get
> rid of me. You can do that at next meeting.

Yes, I victimize too. Let's victimize and be sad together :'(

-- 
Pierre Ynard
"Une âme dans un corps, c'est comme un dessin sur une feuille de papier."