[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] replace some static with asm_visibility or so

[Robert Swain]

On 28/01/2008, Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2008 at 10:15:56AM +0100, Diego Biurrun wrote:
[...]

> If noone speaks up on the mailinglist i decide the way i think its best.
> Thats still majority though (everyone else abstains)
> If people dont speak up here, they shouldnt complain later.

Unfortunately, if people don't feel this is an environment in which
they can voice their opinions then they will tend to abstain which
makes it unfair to consider the mailing lists the only viable place
for discussion/voting. Of course, not everyone is on IRC so that
cannot be considered such either and it would be unfair too for those
who aren't on IRC.

If the atmosphere of the lists is improved such that people feel more
comfortable expressing their opinions on matters here then this won't
be a problem and it makes sense to do this as we are all on these
lists and then abstaining from discussion on the list could be
considered acceptable.

> > That is not true, you are a bully.
> >
> > For example, you have been bullying me at every opportunity ever since I
> > dared stand up to you because of your refusal to improve your spelling.
> > Afterwards it seemed like you were trying your very best to make sure I
> > regretted standing up to you.
>
> hmm, if you see it that way, i must say i did not conciously intend to bully
> you or anyone else. But i must say that you and mans did not skip an
> oppertunity to bully me about the spelling.

For what it's worth, I think this is a partially fair point as you
were considerably pressured into improving your English. You don't
seem to have kept the improvement going but that's beside the point.
At times you were stubborn and deliberately evasive of making an
improvement and even seemed to make extra work for Diego making
corrections.

As mentioned during the discussion, you wouldn't accept below-par code
to be committed to trunk and yet you readily committed poor (and
possibly incomprehensible) English which is quite a double standard.
Whilst I would be happier with you spending time on coding because it
is clearly your strength, maybe it would be more consistent for you to
submit patches for documentation for review by the maintainers or
people who are strong at English. This would seem fair to me.

> also i feel people should send me a mail and complain if they think i treat
> them unfairly. I dont remember anyone ever complained to me until now ...

Again it's a problem of intimidation and being uncomfortable
complaining, especially because of the power and status the seemingly
natural meritocracy that floats around the open source world might
grant.

Ideally no one should need to complain to anyone if people weren't
aggressive or rude. And even if people recognised that they were in a
bad mood when writing a response, or that they were getting frustrated
with the way things were going in a thread or whatever and
subsequently apologised, calmed down and tried to tackle the issues
reasonably, the need to complain would be alleviated. We're adults,
not children, we don't need to bitch back and forth to resolve
something.

This doesn't mean that apologising is an infinite get out of jail free
card. If consistent aggressiveness or rudeness is observed then
apologies will lose credibility and then there will be grounds to
complain.

The point of all this discussion (for me) isn't to point a finger at
you, Michael, and put this on your shoulders but to get everyone to
think more about what they're writing, the affects it has on other
people and the project, and change their behaviour for the better.

Rob