[MPlayer-dev-eng] Re: MPlayer-dev-eng Digest, Vol 39, Issue 30

[Diego Biurrun]

On Mon, Mar 13, 2006 at 11:53:09AM -0800, Trent Piepho wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 mplayer-dev-eng-request at mplayerhq.hu wrote:
> > On Monday, 13 March 2006 at 01:32, xyzzy at speakeasy.net wrote:
> > > > > We don't believe in such nonsense here.
> > > > Rich, you can believe in what you want.
> > > > Actually this is very weird... I was friendly
> > > > and wanted to contribute to MPlayer (I was encouraged by
> > > > our users to contact you, 'cause the suggested that your player is very
> > > > good).
> > > > So I do not understand your hositlity...
> > >
> > > Join the club of people who tried to contribute to mplayer and were attacked
> > > for it.  Rich simply hates everyone and everything.  Don't bother trying to
> > > reason with them, they don't care.  No matter what you say or do they will
> > > just flame you.
> >
> > Please do not spread such FUD. Rich, knowledgeable as he is, does not speak
> > for all MPlayer developers, so I feel offended by your "they don't care"
> > and "they will just flame you" statements and I expect others feel the
> > same.
> 
> When anyone who comes to offer code gets nothing but flames from Rich, he
> might as well speak for all mplayer developers.  When he says, "We don't
> believe in such nonsense here," is that supposed to be the royal "We" or does
> it sound like he is speaking for everyone?
 
Please point me to the code offer you are talking about, because I
didn't see any.  If you are referring to the Aud-X guy, he was asking
for MPlayer to support Aud-X.  Which is absolutely fine, but it's not a
code offer.

I think it should be pretty clear that we devs are a pretty diverse
bunch.  We differ in our views, some of us are outspoken, some not at
all.  Your generalizations are doing us a great deal of injustice IMO.

> I don't bother trying to send my improvements back here anymore because it's
> just not worth the abuse, and I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Nevertheless we are not suffering from a shortage of patches around
here, on the contrary.  Judging from the size of my unapplied patches
mailboxes there are more than 500 pending patches..

[I just fished out a few of yours.  I'll review and apply the build
system related ones, they look good at first sight.  If you are willing
to answer questions I should be able to find a moment to look them over
the coming days.]

I'm not saying there might not be a problem here, but it's far from
being as black & white as you make it look like.  New people arrive and
come back and the last year has seen quite a few new faces given commit
privileges.

So everybody who feels unjustly abused, raise your hand and voice, I
want to know about it.

> When you get flamed for your quoting style,

The mailing list rules are on the homepage.  Are they not clear enough?
Do you consider preferred quoting styles on mailing lists excessive?

> the format of your diff

Ah, diff formatting...  'diff -u' is the single most repeated sentence
on this mailing list.  I've probably written it about 100 times myself.
I'm sure we're not making this clear enough on the homepage and in the
docs.  Do you have constructive suggestions for this problem?

I can assure you it's quite frustrating to repeat this over and over
again while the patch senders (seemingly) don't improve.  I'm afraid
it's only human to lose one's patience sometimes, but of course it's
wrong.

Regards

Diego