[MPlayer-users] Next rc or 1.0 anyone

[Martin Emrich]

Hi!

As an mplayer/mencoder user since more than 5 years now, I see this type
of discussion again and again popping up. I, too, think that a project
that is around as long as mplayer should have some kind of release plan,
especially if it is so mature (I _is_ already the swiss army knife of
media players) an supposedly feature-complete.

Don't get me wrong, I don't care about version numbers, I don't care if
you call it "mplayer 1.0", "mplayer 2008", "mplayer 0.99.5" or just
"mplayer". I still use rc2, because it does what I expect from it, and I
don't think I'll roll some dice on which SVN Revision I'll upgrade to
next. I love mplayer and what it can do, and I have the utmost respect
for the technical achievement it is.

Nico Sabbi schrieb:

> if you use in "production" something you didn't test thouroughly
> we can hardly be blamed. Ever heard that "the winning team 
> doesn't change" ? 

What means "in production"? For me, it does not necessarily mean "I earn
money with it", but also for my personal use, I "produce" something
(e.g. archival of my TV recordings). So if it's not meant for commercial
use, not for private use either, what is it for anyways?

> mplayer is not a (commercial)
> software with a clearly stated project or roadmap, nor we have
> customers to satisfy or compatilbility constraints with older
> versions.

I see this differently, too, any user of an FLOSS project is somehow a
customer. the -users mailing list is more or less a customer support
department, where people get help. Of course this is only my opinion, as
you say, the "winning team" (=the developers) more or less dictates the
point of view on this.

> All the development that takes place is supposed to improve mplayer in 
> some respect.

But what for, if not for the benefit of it's users? Although I am sure
that it is not true, such an attitude could imply that you don't care
about Joe Average User.

> If you want something managed more formally look at ffmpeg,
> that at least has a series of regression tests to satisfy and API/ABI 
> compatibility restrictions.

Hmm, the only other major project I know of that by decision does not
release. It was quite fun to find out which revision works with the
vdr-softdevice plugin, and I ended up extracting the source from the
latest Ubuntu package. Some time later, I moved to vdr-xineliboutput...

> Finally, if you rely on mencoder for something more serious than
> hobbists's games than you have more serious problems to care for 
> than the informality of the development of mplayer ;)

That's absolutely true, If I were a company and I had needs that mplayer
satifies, I might even hire one of the core devs. But as I said before,
also Joe Average has at lease _some_ expectations.


Nico Sabbi schrieb:
> On Friday 27 June 2008 10:57:23 RC wrote:

>> and it's positively impossible for anyone to exchange
>> instructions on how to use MPlayer, without ensuring exact
>> commonality of version.
>
> if users just learned to read ... documentation

You nailed it. Why are there so many "Noob" questions? Because reading
documentation is an investment of time. And if this investment might be
void when the next svn commit comes, how can you expect from Joe Average
to read the docs.. again?

Ciao

Martin