[vlc-devel] Update on the VLC project

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

On Fri, 4 May 2012 02:19:34 +0200, Pierre Ynard <linkfanel at yahoo.fr>
wrote:
>> > 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.

Seriously, I can see how a roadmap is useful for downstream businesses.

But I do not believe a roadmap can work in a Bazaar project. It needs a
Cathedral setup, which more or less implies single person/company leading
the project.

If that were to happen, the community complain that the project has been
hijacked by a company for its own ends. That is a frequent problem for OSS
projects.

I don't think we need to change the development, and I also don't think we
can. If a business want a certain feature on a certain roadmap, it can
always hire a contractor or get its employees on the task. That's how so
many businesses succesfully build upon the Linux kernel even though the
kernel is very much a Bazaar project.

The only problem I see with the current model, lies with release
management rather than with development steering. I do think we should use
time boxing with short time boxes, so that new features and invasive fixes
can be delivered to users in a somewhat timely fashion. But then the
problem is, how do you get critical bug fixed within the time box? I don't
have an answer to that.

>> 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.

Say there is no or little orientation. Why do you think we need one? What
orientation would you propose?

With the notable exception of iOS, I don't recall much contention on what
the project or the association should do and should not do.

> 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.

HADOPI was discussed and decided at the last FOSDEM meeting. I have not
checked, but I assume it was mentioned in the meeting minutes.

> And take the appstore: it's good to review the updates to the ToS,
> but I'm not aware of any development.

That's open-source. You cannot force developer to say that they are
working on something, or not.

There has been some work if you look at vlc-commits in the recent months.

(...)
>> 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?

I must say, I interpreted your mail as an attack on JB's work. If that is
not what you meant, then it was very confusing.

(...)
>> 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.

Guys, the clueless acts of a company triggered the Apple Store fiasco. The
company does not exist anymore. None of us were ever part of it. The
developer that helped them is not participating in the project anymore. I
think there is no point in picking a fight about it at this point.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
Sent from my collocated server