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Cross-Platform Video Chat For Linux?
Ethan1701 writes "Some of my friends are using iChat to stay in touch and gap the distance of the Atlantic. I'm feeling left out on my Fedora Gnome based desktop. Is there a good program for Gnome that provides cross-platform instant messaging and video chat? This rules out Skype and aMSN, as well as any other app that's specific for the ICQ/AOL Network. Kopete is for KDE. Pidgin doesn't intend to develop video-chat, I haven't found a plugin for it that provides video, and Gaim-vv hasn't been developed in over two years and is so out of date that it's still going by Gaim and not Pidgin. Do Slashdot readers have an application that meets these needs? Maybe even one that surpasses iChat?"
QuantumG, some of the things you say are reasonable, but sometimes you just lose the thread entirely and enter pure la la land. This is one such case.
Bad programming or bad design are sometimes excusable, for example when the developer has inadequate technical background or experience, but they are never defensible under any circumstances, regardless of whether the software is being produced for a multi-million dollar product or for a small non-commercial community project.
Excusing poor practice is reasonable because it can be remedied through dedication and experience, and both the project and the developer benefit in the process, as do the end users.
But defending poor practice is never reasonable, because it doesn't help the developer to learn to do better, it results in friction within its own community (since other developers and the more clued up users know that things could be better), and it obviously doesn't help end users at all.
What's more, your "if you want it done differently, then do it" advice is at best a recipe for forking, which is never a good idea unless the current project leadership is completely beyond the pale, and at worst it's nothing more than a brush-off. It achieves nothing at all, beyond giving the bad developer a get-home-free card.
Making your personal project into a FOSS one doesn't come burdened with many responsibilities, but it does carry one: to act reasonably on behalf of your users, and that includes acting upon their suggestions --- yes, even some of the whiny ones because where there is smoke there is also usually fire. Putting yourself beyond criticism and beyond appeal for change is not a responsible attitude, and defending the unresponsive developer and/or his bad practice is itself the height of irresponsibility to the users of a project.
Whether the software is offered for free or not is completely immaterial to the above. Poor software is poor software, regardless of cost, and is indefensible.
Since you've defended your position on "the right of crap developers to be crap because they're not paid" over several iterations, I don't expect you to see the light now. But I'm afraid you're dead wrong, and just showing yourself to lack good judgement.