[MPlayer-dev-eng] [POLICY] clarify conditions for functionality removal

[Ivan Kalvachev]

2006/2/5, Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de>:
> We have the following paragraph in our policy that forbids removing
> functionality from the code:
>
> 4. Do not change behavior of the program (renaming options etc) without
>    first discussing it on the mplayer-dev-eng mailing list. Do not
>    remove functionality from the code. Just improve!
>
> I think this needs to be revisited.  Removing functionality can make
> sense in certain cases (MHz counter anyone?) and should be allowed under
> certain conditions.  I therefore propose updating the policy to read:
>
> 4. Do not change behavior of the program (renaming options etc) or
>    remove functionality from the code without first discussing it
>    on the mplayer-dev-eng mailing list.
>
> I think this is closer to the way we handle the situation right now and
> makes more sense.

Well,
If i remember right I was against removing the CPU counter in the
first place. (We could have disabled it at least for verbosity<=0)

If you want to remove a rule just to allow removing mmap support in
ao_alsa, then don't.
We are not parlament or goverment that must follow the law. These
rules are just guide for us. We can always break them as long as
everybody agree that.

For example - mmap support. It seems that this functionality is broken
and nobody have interes in fixing it. Not only that it is also
redundant. These reasons alone are not enough to convince me that this
code must be removed. But after looking in the changes and that they
remove nealy 1/3 of the code, I lean toward removing mmap support. A
single non-working function, that bloats the code and doesn't bring
any advantages (this still have to be checked btw) can be removed.

We are not parlament to vote on features.