[FFmpeg-devel] MPlayer changes discussed on FFmpeg mailing lists

[Diego Biurrun]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 01:33:06AM +0100, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 06:37:54PM +0100, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> > Recent events make me think a general statement is in order.
> > 
> > FFmpeg and MPlayer have always been closely related and many devs are
> > shared even though the relationship is no longer quite as close as it
> > used to be.
> > 
> > Some of the FFmpeg committers are MPlayer committers as well.  However,
> > the FFmpeg mailing lists are not the MPlayer mailing lists.  MPlayer
> > changes *must* be discussed on the MPlayer mailing lists before being
> > executed.  Relying on MPlayer developers to follow FFmpeg mailing lists
> > in order to be notified about changes to MPlayer is unacceptable.  It
> > also does not work in practice as we just witnessed.
> > 
> > Also note that such behavior is a clear violation of MPlayer project
> > policy (?5, ?9, ?12).  In the past I have been direly criticized for
> > not closing accounts due to perceived policy changes.  Please avoid
> > putting me in a situation where my only option is closing accounts.
> 
> Please accept my appology in the name of all people involved in this
> 
> We should have CC-ed mplayer-dev, noone did.
> I repeat my and carls offer to revert the change, it is no major problem at all
> to keep the tabs in libmpcodecs and keep or remove them from
> libavfilter/libmpcodecs independantly, if the mplayer developers prefer this.
> 
> Also as you are making a general statement about the policy, let me make one
> too. what you say that "my only option is closing accounts"
> really you can "send a mail", "call us on the phone, hell you have my and i bet
> carls number", closing accounts is the thing that is done when other options
> fail.

Funny that you never got that memo yourself.  To this day, you have not
initiated a single phone call yourself, not even an IRC chat.  Surely
not for lack of opportunities or for lack of the people around you trying
to make you use a medium other than email...

Also funny that you don't remember how many times I picked up the phone
or got into private conversations with clashing parties in order to
defuse conflicts.

> Like it should have been when you ignored my dozends request to revert
> several commits you did to my code ...

I have just deleted the initial reply to this and the whole email from
last night.  I guess you don't need that much imagination to come up
with some of its colorful contents.

Let me just say this much - I sure have my defects and some of them you
may even be pointing out correctly, but this is not the place and time.
I am prepared to accept apologies and then go on to forgive and forget.
(Note that I'm not looking for an apology here.)

But apologies must be genuine.  A genuine apology only talks about one's
own mistakes, without accusations, retaliation or playing down the
mistakes one is apologizing for by putting them into perspective with
similar faults displayed by others, much less the person one is
apologizing to.

Diego