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

[Robert Swain]

Hello,

On 28/01/2008, Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2008 at 04:31:07AM +0100, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 28, 2008 at 01:59:05AM +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> > > Do not get me wrong; your contributions over the years have been of
> > > value.  That does not, however, give you exclusive rights to FFmpeg,
> > > and it certainly does not allow you to bully other developers.
> >
> > I do not bully anyone.
>
> 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.
>
> You have bullied Andreas ?man after he made another attempt at
> resurrecting the AAC decoder, threatening to revoke his account.
> He made a good faith attempt to do the right thing, now he is
> discouraged from further working on it.
>
> More examples could be found, but that's beside the point.  You may not
> feel like you're a bully, but I can assure you that the people on the
> receiving end feel different and that few people dare stand up to you.

I would like to add my support to these claims.

>From my perspective, Michael has been bullying Diego individually
since the grammar discussion where Michael did eventually back down
and improve his grammar but not graciously at all, quite the opposite.

Michael has been bullying root at many available opportunities,
suggesting that they aren't catering to requests for various things
but in fact they have been as long as the majority are in agreement
about what should be done, they have had the time to do so and they
think the idea is not detrimental. If they haven't the time to do so,
this isn't any reason to bully them, more to appoint extra support to
the root group. From what I have seen recently, they are keeping on
top of the basic things but maybe don't have time for some of the
larger plans.

Michael bullied Andreas when he made his honest attempt to resurrect
development of the LC AAC code from the SoC AAC decoder as it is the
most widely used audio object type from AAC by far, even if some do
use the SBR and PS extensions. Everyone I've spoken to considers LC
AAC the major priority and rightly so.

Maybe Andreas didn't conduct the resurrection exactly to Michael's
liking but I thought he was very rude to Andreas and this kind of
attitude is not at all encouraging and shouldn't be acceptable. I
certainly wouldn't accept it in person, why should it be accepted on
these mailing lists?

Also, I agree with M?ns that Michael is very close to bullying Baptiste as well.

Now, having said all this, I respect Michael's position because he
does offer an immense amount to this project, whether through off-list
theoretical advice, all the patch reviewing, all the coding, all the
discussion and anything else he does.. M?ns is probably a better judge
of quite how much and whether the project would survive without him.
Regardless, none of this gives good reason to bully people.

No longer focusing on Michael and making more general and probably
off-topic comments...

One of the main things I dislike about this project is its image. I've
said it multiple times to multiple people and heard it from
professionals and users alike, as well as developers and community
members. I'm not a superficial person, but I'd rather something have
good appearance (and be good) than have bad appearance (and be good).

These lists and the project are widely known to be populated by a high
proportion of arrogant, impolite and unfriendly participants. I don't
think this has to come with the territory of highly intelligent,
technically-minded people and I find this counter-productive,
discouraging, unprofessional and consequently damaging to the project.

FFmpeg is an awesome project and it thrives because of dedicated,
technically knowledgeable and capable developers. It thrives because
of the code we have and its capabilities. I'm sure it will continue to
thrive in this way, as long as the strong-minded developers don't kill
each other.

Wouldn't it be better for all of us if we could reign in our
annoyance, put a bit more effort into being polite and approachable
for the sake of encouraging development of the project to get more
people on board to better maintain and improve the code? Everyone gets
annoyed sometimes and says things more aggressively than they might
have otherwise, that's nothing a quick sincere apology won't set
right. Repeated or consistent aggressiveness is unnecessary.

I'm not saying we should lower our standards because that's a
significant part of the project philosophy, a strong reason for the
prosperity and good reputation the code has and part of the reason the
standards are so high is because of technically brilliant reviewers,
maintainers and members of the community.

So, you might tell me that if I don't like it, I should go elsewhere.
That's reasonable, I'm not trying to dictate but I'm staying anyway
because I believe it's the best project of its kind in some areas and
has the potential to be a one-stop multimedia manipulation project.

The project can continue as is (lack of death by developer brawl
permitting) but I know there are others who would much prefer a
friendly atmosphere around here who also keep quiet because it takes a
lot of effort to tussle with flamers and eats time that would be
better spent in a productive manner as doing such tussling is often
futile.

Please, be polite and friendly. It really doesn't take that much time
and effort and I dare say it saves a whole lot and gains us more
support.

Rob