[MPlayer-dev-eng] MPlayer Developer Meeting (was: Re: Commit rules and coexistence rules)

[Michael Niedermayer]

Hi

Ive thought a while if i should reply or if i should not ...
Part in me just wants to leave, leave mplayer to its doom under the current
administration. Not because i dont care about mplayer or the other
developers but because i do not really see how to solve the situation.
Iam not root, my voice does not count, be it in relation to uoti or
in relation to who leads mplayer. And iam not really interrested to work
for a project that treats its members voices so lowly.
The other side in me does not want to give up ...


On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 10:10:26PM +0200, Attila Kinali wrote:
[...]
> In the beginning, i tried to orchestrate in the background together
> with Diego so that the relevant people would come to an agreement.
> Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances i wasn't able to attend
> to it until the end. Also, for quite some time i didn't want to
> read anything about "Uoti did this" "Diego did that" and all that
> shit. My free time is way to valuable to me than to waste it for
> this kind of unnecessary "controverse", so i didn't read any
> MPlayer mailinglists for months...
> Now, that i thought i might catch up with some of the things that
> went on, i have to say that our attempt to mediate didn't work out.
> The problem persists, the issue is unsolved. It even came to the
> point where i ask myself whether there aren't better things for me
> to do than to waste my time and money for a project that just
> eats itself. The whole issue evolved to a point, where i think it
> is impossible to resolve it trough normal ways anymore. But it is
> imperative for the whole project that these issues get resolved as
> soon as possible.
> 
> Hence, i call for a general developer meeting until the end of
> the year to discuss all the issues that piled up over the last
> years and to peacefully resolve them face to face. Eligible is
> anyone who has write access to the svn repository of MPlayer at
> the time of the meeting. 

I hope you wont take it personal but what you say above sounds a little
like: "Ive not read your discussions, my free time is too valuable, you
should all meet in person and repeat the discussions"

Let me quote the wanderer, i belive he summarized the problem with
uoti quite well:
--------
> > Oh, Uoti confessed that he never intended to follow any MPlayer
> > rules.

> For the record, this - and only this - is why I would consider it
> reasonable, or perhaps even obligatory, to remove his commit access. I
> do not, and TTBOMM never did, consider any of his actual commits to be
> that severe of an offense, except as they represent manifestations of
> this point. Some of them would be offenses, yes, but so far as I recall
> none of them - not even collectively - would be enough to justify
> kicking him out.

> (I'm not sure why I'm bothering to mention this, since I'm not a
> developer and have no reason to expect any of those who are to value my
> opinion... but for some reason it feels worth mentioning anyway.)

I think I've figured out why I wanted to mention it.

 From my perspective, this is the single central issue at the core of all
of this; if this is not considered to be a problem, then there
effectively is no problem worth getting very excited about, certainly
none worth going on about as long as this has gone.

This issue has been raised a few times, by a few different people - all
of them, as far as I remember, among those making a (fuss, stink,
festering pit of flames) about the matters involved. I have not seen any
of the people not fitting that description address it, with the
exception of Uoti himself, and since he is the source of the issue he
cannot resolve it on his own short of conceding entirely.

Diego and the other people not in the "making a fuss" category seem to,
in general, be of the opinion that what problem there may have been has
been resolved, and there is no longer any remaining problem worth
discussing here.

 From my perspective, and I think that of at least a few other people,
this issue *is* a problem - indeed, as I said, the central problem - and
as far as I can tell not only has it not been resolved, it has not even
been acknowledged by those who consider the problem to be resolved.

I do not think that this matter will die down, at least not permanently,
unless and until this issue is dealt with.

--
       The Wanderer
--------

So, considering the wanderers summary of "the problem" i am curious how it
could be solved by more discussions amongth the developers. Its not us
who have said that we dont care about the rules and by extension the team
who made the rules.

Besides uoti, the second thing is the mplayer leader.
This is at least for me completely unrelated to uoti, and i would really
like to see mplayer be put under democratic control and a different leader
with regular leader elections. Anyway
until a proper vote about the leader happens and its results are in force
i will refrain from any and all maintainership of code in mplayer.
I simply do not feel comfortable to work under the current anti democratic
system and as its unpaid&FOSS theres really no reason for me to put up with a
environment in which i feel ignored, unwelcome and uncomfortable. That is not
meant against diego, who is my friend but against his political views with
which i very strongly disagree with.

[...]
-- 
Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad
people will find a way around the laws. -- Plato
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