[Ffmpeg-devel] I'm giving up

[Panagiotis Issaris]

Hi,

On Tue, 2006-11-21 at 14:59 +0100, Reimar D?ffinger wrote:
> Hello,
> On Tue, Nov 21, 2006 at 01:44:10PM +0100, Cyril Russo wrote:
> > Ok guys,
> > 
> > I'm fed up. Here the patch attached (in case Thunderbird messes it up). 
> > There is no tab inside as both
> > hexdump -C mjpeg.c | grep  "09 "
> > hexdump -C mjpeg.c | grep  " 09"
> > give no output.
> > 
> > What could have been a 5 mn process is becoming a 3 days issue for what 
> > ? 50 lines of code.
> 
> I can understand you, and I left my first patch to ffmpeg for others to
> fix, too. Though I think there were simpler patches that had to go
> through worse.
> I'd like to say though that at the rate that ffmpeg evolves 50 lines of
> only suboptimal code will become 500 lines of mess in no time. Look at
> some of the code in MPlayer (e.g. mplayer.c) if you need "proof"...
Code can also be optimized and improved after being accepted in the main
source tree.

I do not think that acceptance in the main source tree excludes code
improvements afterward. Of course I am not saying that all code should
be accepted on first post, but I do not think that new code should be
perfect either. Moreover it's an added feature, not including the code
gives several disadvantages. Namely, the new feature is not there even
if it would have been suboptimal implementation. Secondly, the changes
(optimizations etc.) which the contributor makes on his own are not
being tracked and logged by the revision control system. Thirdly, others
are less inclined to help out on completing and optimizing the new
feature. And fourthly, it frightens off new contributors.

And fourthly, it frightens off new contributors, directly as in the case
of the parent of this thread, or indirectly as in my case.

In my case, my employer is getting fed up with the patch not getting
accepted, and it is getting hard for me to explain and defend the
reasons for getting the patches integrated in the main repository. Most
likely, they will not want me to adapt the patches anymore, and just
carry on with the development, publishing them, but no more then that. 
Which results in what basically is a fork. Which I'd truly dislike as
this would most likely exclude others from helping out.

With friendly regards,
Takis

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