Within the article I found that they mentioned quite a bit about kde
You're right about the KDE bias. I think the outcome would be bit different if all of them had actually tried Galeon, Evolution and Abiword, as an example. I know a lot of people (that have tried both) prefer Evolution over KMail.
To me this "review" was more of "what I've accidentally heard about and bothered to use" instead of an actual review of several carefully chosen contenders. I think it was unfortunate that it was labelled as a "review" since that gives the outcome more credability than what you'll find if you actually read the article.
But your point is certainly something to think about. If developers are releasing their 'final products' right now using the old libraries when the whole GNOME architecture is in flux, we could be looking at some seriously trying times for users. The changes in GNOME 2 will likely break some this 'new' software (even tho it's not *supposed* to...)
No worries.:)
Most significant projects are preparing for GNOME2 porting or have begun. The reason you are seeing so many "major" software releases is simply because the developers want to get the stable GNOME1 code out of the door to the masses and make it a worthy 1.0 before they spend most of their resources porting stuff. It's not like the developers are forgetting GNOME2, not at all.
Gnumeric isn't even ported to GNOME 2. Neither is Abiword and dozens of other major GNOME programs and are unlikely to before GNOME 2 is released.
Why do you believe that? Porting work of most apps is already in progress or in some cases already finished, that's why all projects are releasing versions off their stable gnome1 branches (in a lot of cases it's the last gnome1 releases), so that they can concentrate on the gnome2 branches and finish them too.
Konqueror renders twice the pages correctly in half the time that Mozilla does
Twice the pages? Really? Do you have any examples? Else this is probably mostly wish-thinking, as every other person I've met will testify that Mozilla renders more pages correctly. Nothing personal against Konqueror, it's just that the Mozilla people have had more time to spend developing their engine.
And browses the web, as opposed to reading mail and news, providing an IRC client, and making my morning coffee.
I hope you know that you don't have to install those parts if you do not want to.
You're right about the KDE bias. I think the outcome would be bit different if all of them had actually tried Galeon, Evolution and Abiword. For example, I haven't yet personally heard anyone (that has used both) prefer KWord over Evolution, favorite desktop environment preferences aside.
To me this "review" was more of "what I've accidentally heard about and bothered to use" instead of an actual thorough impartial review of several carefully chosen contenders, which is what "review" means to me.
If you consider that the Italian president is also a media magnate and controls most major Italian media, I think it is unlikely that the EU starts investigating media monopolies any time soon as long as he's still in power. But maybe I'm just pessimistic about this.
The two branches, "testing" and "stable" are not insanely well-tested, stable, and secure as the people at Debian want them to be. While "testing" is generally better than other, released, distributions, and with newer software, it does not meet the insanely high standards of the Debian developers.
Still, stable releases is usually what counts if you compare distributions. It simply is unfair to compare a stable version with an unstable version, and so you have to decide upon one type of versions across the board to compare with. If Debian has a disadvantage on such comparisons then it is too bad for Debian, but not an excuse for invalidating comparisons of stable versions of distributions.
And, by the way, I have yet to see any proof that the quality of "testing" should be equal to the stable versions of other distributions.
Re:Coming from a store owner...
on
The Euro
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Sweden is not in Euroland either, but most major, country-wide shops have already announced that they will accept payment in Euro, mostly as a service to customers (after all they want to attract all customers, also foreign ones).
They are not likely to list prices in Euro however, since the SEK<->EUR exchange rate is not fixated and the list prices would have to be changed almost every day, which of course would be impractical. But payment in the converted Euro amount will be entirely OK. A lot of smaller shops are expected to follow this policy, used by the bigger ones, and allow payment in Euro.
Re:Issues with the euro in day-to-day life
on
The Euro
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The goverments didn't understand rounding when they locked down the rates...
I do think they understand it very well. Rounding should always be done in the last step, e.g in the consumer-retailer chain with the individual prices, not the first step which in this case was the currency fixating inbetween the 12 Euroland currencies. The earlier you introduce rounding, the more impact it has. If the Euroland currencies' values would have been rounded to the Euro, the national economies and trade would have been greatly affected. Just skipping some decimals would increase or decrease the national debts and expenses and budget and export incomes and whatnot and cause economic unbalances, the greater the rounding. And roundings would have to be great in some cases, and all this for a questionable gain in currency transition. Remember that this is a transition, not an ongoing conversion, so artificially increasing national debts and possibly reducing profitability for export industries just for some additional one-time ease in the human transition is questionable. Computers and pocket currency converters can handle this easily, and the governments also have provided cheap pocket currency converters en masse to people for the last year.
Most prices are set so they have a nice psychological point. This is why cars in the US are adversied as $19,999 and not 20 grand. Without a E$.25 coin, the price of coffee isn't going to.75 but will soon go to 1.00.
Yes, and the danger of new psychologigal prices in fact making things more expensive has been greatly discussed. This is why shops have been required to also list all prices in Euros for the last year, even if the Euro wasn't available back then. Even if this probably doesn't eliminate price increases, it probably limits them somewhat since the people who noted the previous prices in Euros will notice if they suddenly are "rounded up" to a psychologically attractive price, and put pressure on the shops.
Who cares about stupid extra symbols? Just because the yanks have their S with strikes, is a special symbol needed? Why not just use plain old 'e'?
Probably because an 'e' is very ambigous.
I'll keep using that (although I'd rather have stuck to using marks.. eu sucks, a fscking megacorp lobbying organization).
That's one opinion, there are more of them. I think most of them are unrelated to the Euro itself and are more about the EU and EMU. Even EU opponists probably appreciate the fact that they don't have to exchange currencies when they go abroad in Europe, one would think, and that price levels are easier to compare.
(And I couldn't have thought of a worse name for the currency...)
Remember that it has to be easily pronouncable in a lot of languages. Given that, "Euro" (which should be pronouncable as an abbreviation of "Europe" in a lot of languages) is not so bad.
Re:Picture of bills with US bill
on
The Euro
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· Score: 2
Since when should the ASCII chart decide what a new currency symbol should be? The ASCII chart is not more than a mediocre excuse for a character table that lacked a lot of needed characters even when it was new, and has been unmodern ever since. It doesn't even include all characters needed for English! Replace with a Unicode character set as soon as possible wherever possible, if you have the chance.
Also, usually all characters already have a defined meaning. Adding an additional meaning to a character would most likely only cause confusion. Clearly a new symbol has its place, it's after all one of the world's most powerful currencies. If you question why Euro needs its own symbol, you should also ask yourself why the US Dollar or the British Pound need their own symbols.
Yes, that also means that RedHat is GNU.
While Redhat uses Linux, that doesn't mean that RedHat "is" Linux. But for the sake of Redhat's marketshare, they are willing to ignore that fact.
I'm sick and tired of this "argument". Just because Red Hat Linux says "Linux" on the box, some conspiracy theorists always seem to like to jump to the conclusion that they are denying other GNU/Linux distibutions. This can only be true if you think that stating:
FooDistro is a Linux distribution
implies
The only Linux distribution is FooDistro
Hint for the clueless: Just because A includes B doesn't mean that B is all part of A. The statement "A includes B" is still true even if A only includes part of B, and even if also C and D include B.
Just because I sell a bag of potatoes and label it "Potatoes" doesn't mean I deny the existance of all other potatoes in the world, nor that I'm denying the fact that anyone else is selling potatoes. It is just information that the bag includes potatoes.
Compiling is not hard, and most people who use linux quickly find it easy as a Windows user's step-by-step installs with an InstallShield application. Very little difference
>>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;
Only because most people who use Linux are nerds. Honestly, can you say that typing./configure, looking all over the net for all the dependencies you're missing, typing make, looking all over the net for dependencies./configure didn't catch, and make install, and looking all over the system to see where the hell the binaries got put, is easier than clicking a few times and putting in the install path?
It wasn't me who wrote that. I just quoted the poster I replied to. Needless to say, I don't agree with him.
To be honest, redhat did bring it on themselves a little bit for sticking with 2.96 and not upgrading to gcc-3.00 when it first came out.
Changing compiler during the same distro version cycle and breaking binary compatibility during the same cycle probably wouldn't be a very clever thing to do. Besides, gcc 3 still isn't that suitable as a platform compiler last I heard, it doesn't compile glibc etc.
1 - The MPlayer developers' apparently find it irresponsible for companies like Redhat to include gcc 2.96 (or whatever it is). By making it difficult for their users to compile MPlayer with this version of gcc, they are using their power and influence (indirectly) to twist Redhat's arm into changing its behavior. I actually approve of this behavior (causing change by writing code) and I applaud MPlayer devs' courage to do this in the face of the heat they will get from people like Joe Barr.
It's not just about Mplayer versus Joe Barr, it's about a lot of annoyed Mplayer users on major GNU/Linux platforms versus a few Mplayer developers with their own political agenda (anti-gcc-2.96-rh) and their desire to use the software project for false statements and pure FUD to support said agenda. Whatever they are using their power and influence for, it's certainly not about fair play.
As for Joe Barr, he seems to be exhibiting the typical Microsoft attitude of "if enough people use it, everyone should support it." He says that gcc 2.96 must be supported because it comes installed by default on his Mandrake box. That's like a Windows user telling me that my project has to work perfectly on Windows XP or that it has to work perfectly on an ATI card (since they are so popular). Think about it. Should developers allow popularity to dictate what they do? My answer is no. Do what you think is right, don't allow the dominant software to control your actions.
Your argument is flawed. This is not about not working flawlessly on all configurations and systems, this is about spreading blatant lies and FUD.
Joe Barr's argument that gcc 2.96 should be embraced because it is installed by default on distribution only makes sense if the devs are in the business of pleasing customers. But as Joe has obviously forgotten, these devs don't have customers. And they probably don't care about annoying potential users either.. and why should they?
Maybe because no contributor/developer is born as a contributor? Most of them start as users, and the Mplayer project's attitude towards users is rude, to say the least.
2 - Regarding the devs' inflammatory comments in their FAQ... well, to put it bluntly, I often feel exactly the same way that they do when people ask me incessant questions. The only difference is I force myself not to put my true feelings in the FAQ. Devs are humans and they lose patience and get annoyed.
Yes, but by putting their rude remarks towards users asking questions on their web page, they are showing their arrogance towards all users, not just the one(s) that asked a particular question. Even if a rude remark on a mailing list is bad to begin with, putting the same attitude everywhere on the home page is making it many times worse.
Let's face it, should they really be responsible for answering questions about installing shared libraries when it is a more general linux issue and not something specific to MPlayer?
No. There's a major difference between answering "I'm sorry, installing shared libraries is a general Linux topic and is thus out of the scope of this documentation. Please read the manuals for your distribution or other documentation on the Internet" instead of calling users stupid and lusers.
In fact, on a more broader scope, should they really be responsible for answering anyone's questions at all? If you said yes, then I invite you to think about why you said yes. Probably the only reason you can come up with is because "If they are mean to their users, than their users will leave and they won't have any users anymore." Fair enough.. but do the MPlayer devs really care if anyone uses their stuff? They probably don't frankly.
Quite obviously not. The problem is that all contributors are beginners at some point. Thus there's certainly no need to call users names or being otherwise unpolite, even if you don't want to answer all questions yourself.
Any dev who works on free software for the sake of providing a quality product for Mr. Newbie quickly becomes depressed and stops working on the project.
That's not necessarily the case. One doesn't have to answer all users' questions. In my experience, a good FAQ is a good start. If you don't want to answer all questions a short pointer to where the information could be found is a good start to make people "go away". Being rude is not a part of this, it's perfectly possible to give an "look for information elsewhere" answer without being rude.
Only those devs who work on free software for their own amusement, interest, needs, etc. are those who can endure for long periods of time.
In my experience, there's usually no conflict in creating software that you like yourself and that can also be usable by others without insulting them, or continuing to spread information that many people have already pointed out is very untruthful.
The bottom line is, that users of free software often create more headaches for developers of free software than benefits. If that statement shocks you, I'd encourage you to think about it for a while...
Only if you divide the world into a "we developers", "them users" mindset. This is usually far from true, in particular it doesn't take into account that a person can be both at the very same time, and that noone is born as a contributor/developer.
You know, now that I have looked at the official page and read the viewpoint of the development team, I actually regret posting the link.
Do you have a link to the specific page with their response to the article? Also, why do you regret? Personally I think that the compiler warning is still as much FUD as ever before, and no excuse from the Mplayer developers will change that.
They wrote the software and are giving it away to you.
There is no law that says they must be all sweetness and light to users who give them no thanks half the time, no help almost all the time, and no money all the time.
No, there sure is no law about that, and sure they are perfectly free to annoy and make fun out of users. But that wasn't my point. My question was "Why"? Besides of general advantages of being polite, most people are not born to be contributors or developers and start as users at some point, and thus it should be in their best interest to try to be polite at least for this reason.
They wrote the software, it is a priveledge they gant you to be able to use the software they put so much time into. Be thankful you get that priveledge, but don't expect the be waited on hand and foot.
I know this, thanks, I don't guarantee support on my free software contributions either, although I try to do the best I can. But there's a lot of difference between the issue of providing support or not, and being deliberately rude against users and spreading FUD.
Have you read their resoning for not allowing binary distribution? Obviosly not. There are tons of compile-time options that if you take the time to look through can make your experience great. The player gets customized more to your machine through these, for the most part automagically. One of these customizations is centered around what processor you have. They rely on compile-time processor detection to optimize to your computer. A binary built for a K6 will die on a Pentium, or the other way around.
Easily solvable by producing different binaries. Binaries for ALL possible configurations is obviously not an option, but binaries for some tested configurations is a good start.
Really, this is a moot point for not allowing binaries. The second issue you mention is the real issue:
Secondly, there are legal issues with binary distribution. The source of mplayer is legally distributable. But because many of the licenses covering files in the project do not allow binary distribution, it's illegal.
Compiling is not hard, and most people who use linux quickly find it easy as a Windows user's step-by-step installs with an InstallShield application. Very little difference.
Actually, there are major differences. Both an InstallShield solution on Windows and a package manager package on GNU/Linux will integrate seemlessly in most cases with the operating system by providing it's own entry in the add/remove software panel in Windows or the system package installer/updater/remover of your choice on your GNU/Linux distribution. In the case of both Windows and GNU/Linux, the installed files on the system will permit easy removal of the piece of software itself and all its files, or in the case of GNU/Linux package managers, both easy removal and upgrading and querying of various parameters. Easy upgrading is a key feature for a lot of people, not just beginners.
Some of the questions in the FAQ do come across as a bit testy, yes. However, this is understandable, because the person who wrote it (Gabucino) is the one who gets ALL the newbie questions. So, yes, he can get annoyed;)
Then maybe he should:
Not try to respond to all boring questions himself and try finding some help for this task
Learn not to come off as a total jerk in his replies although he may have found it boring to answer the same question multiple times.
That the reader of the FAQ in 99.9% of the cases most likely isn't the person(s) that annoyed him with this question is probably more the reason to stay polite and not try to make fun of people or put them off.
However, everyone I've ever talked to on the mailing list is consistently friendly and helpful.
That may be the case, but the purpose of a FAQ is after all to help people avoid having to ask questions on the mailing list, and a lot of people try to read the FAQ before asking on the mailing list. Even more a reason to stay polite. An unfriendly tone of voice in the FAQ doesn't help getting people with valid questions or interesting feedback get interested in the mailing list either.
The only reason that anyone could really call MPlayer controversial is because they had some lisencing issues a while back, because of incompatible lisences in (if I remember right) the OpenDivX portion of the program.
No, there are lots of other reasons, the rudeness towards users and compiler warnings with false information being major parts. Not many software projects try to avoid having users by being arrogant towards them or include false compile-time warnings with the only purpose of spreading FUD about another software project.
That review was really unfair for the MPlayer team. The author of that infamatory article should go out and try to build a good movie player for Linux with *at least* half the features of MPlayer. The article was just an elaborate troll.
What has building a good movie player for GNU/Linux to do with being arrogant towards users and providing compiler warnings with blatantly false information that only serves my own political agenda? I'm not familiar with the author of the article, but the article summarizes my and many other users' experiences with Mplayer, their documentation, and responses from developers quite well.
Something about 2.96 (while 2.4.x was still in -pre) not compiling the kernel correctly, in particular screwing up the filesystem code...
AFAIK, gcc-rh 2.96 has compiled all released, stable kernels just fine, from kernel 2.4.x and up. What's the point? What does it have to do with Mplayer and why does Mplayer need to issue a warning about this compiler? Why doesn't it have a warning for gcc 3, which also has had kernel compilation problems?
... and that GCC 2.96 does not even officially exist, according to GNU [gnu.org]?
You are free to call it anything you like... gcc2.96, gcc 2.96, gcc-rh 2.96, rh-gcc 2.96, gcc 2.96-rh, and so on. Pick anyone you like. It's still an excellent compiler (maybe currently the best free one) and one that is used by at least two major GNU/Linux distributions. It still doesn't answer the question why the Mplayer developers would need to issue a warning and refuse compilation unless you pass a special flag and type in a lie?
It works fine for me on Redhat 7.1 with gcc-2.96-85. Really, they just have a problem with Redhat period, and I don't think they think much of anyone using Redhat linux. I wonder what real consequences derive from using this version of gcc. I've had no problems with mplayer.
Judging from all people I know that have compiled Mplayer with gcc-rh 2.96, that seems to be the general trend. The Mplayer warning seems to be misleading at best and a blatantly false accusation at worst.
While I do not doubt that gcc 2.96 has bugs, in my experience it's not worse than most gcc versions I used during the years, and much better than quite some of them, especially in C++.
Yes. Many people are considering it a better compiler than most gcc:s in the past because it is less sucky and less buggy in a lot of areas. Also, it still (AFAIK) has an edge over gcc 3 in that it compiles glibc and such.
I also did a bit of google-ing about this warning in mplayer, and AFAIK some people were a bit angry that 2.96 has been singled out (probably just because it's a RH release) I wonder if the reasons for so prominently warning people about 2.96 are at least in part political...
They are only political. There used to be problems with the Mplayer code but those have been corrected, but the warning wasn't removed (most likely because of the Mplayer developers' own political agendas and so that they would not looose too much face).
Slashdot Mirror
You're right about the KDE bias. I think the outcome would be bit different if all of them had actually tried Galeon, Evolution and Abiword, as an example. I know a lot of people (that have tried both) prefer Evolution over KMail.
To me this "review" was more of "what I've accidentally heard about and bothered to use" instead of an actual review of several carefully chosen contenders. I think it was unfortunate that it was labelled as a "review" since that gives the outcome more credability than what you'll find if you actually read the article.
No worries. :)
Most significant projects are preparing for GNOME2 porting or have begun. The reason you are seeing so many "major" software releases is simply because the developers want to get the stable GNOME1 code out of the door to the masses and make it a worthy 1.0 before they spend most of their resources porting stuff. It's not like the developers are forgetting GNOME2, not at all.
Why do you believe that? Porting work of most apps is already in progress or in some cases already finished, that's why all projects are releasing versions off their stable gnome1 branches (in a lot of cases it's the last gnome1 releases), so that they can concentrate on the gnome2 branches and finish them too.
Twice the pages? Really? Do you have any examples? Else this is probably mostly wish-thinking, as every other person I've met will testify that Mozilla renders more pages correctly. Nothing personal against Konqueror, it's just that the Mozilla people have had more time to spend developing their engine.
And browses the web, as opposed to reading mail and news, providing an IRC client, and making my morning coffee.
I hope you know that you don't have to install those parts if you do not want to.
To me this "review" was more of "what I've accidentally heard about and bothered to use" instead of an actual thorough impartial review of several carefully chosen contenders, which is what "review" means to me.
If you consider that the Italian president is also a media magnate and controls most major Italian media, I think it is unlikely that the EU starts investigating media monopolies any time soon as long as he's still in power. But maybe I'm just pessimistic about this.
Still, stable releases is usually what counts if you compare distributions. It simply is unfair to compare a stable version with an unstable version, and so you have to decide upon one type of versions across the board to compare with. If Debian has a disadvantage on such comparisons then it is too bad for Debian, but not an excuse for invalidating comparisons of stable versions of distributions.
And, by the way, I have yet to see any proof that the quality of "testing" should be equal to the stable versions of other distributions.
Sweden is not in Euroland either, but most major, country-wide shops have already announced that they will accept payment in Euro, mostly as a service to customers (after all they want to attract all customers, also foreign ones).
They are not likely to list prices in Euro however, since the SEK<->EUR exchange rate is not fixated and the list prices would have to be changed almost every day, which of course would be impractical. But payment in the converted Euro amount will be entirely OK. A lot of smaller shops are expected to follow this policy, used by the bigger ones, and allow payment in Euro.
I do think they understand it very well. Rounding should always be done in the last step, e.g in the consumer-retailer chain with the individual prices, not the first step which in this case was the currency fixating inbetween the 12 Euroland currencies. The earlier you introduce rounding, the more impact it has. If the Euroland currencies' values would have been rounded to the Euro, the national economies and trade would have been greatly affected. Just skipping some decimals would increase or decrease the national debts and expenses and budget and export incomes and whatnot and cause economic unbalances, the greater the rounding. And roundings would have to be great in some cases, and all this for a questionable gain in currency transition. Remember that this is a transition, not an ongoing conversion, so artificially increasing national debts and possibly reducing profitability for export industries just for some additional one-time ease in the human transition is questionable. Computers and pocket currency converters can handle this easily, and the governments also have provided cheap pocket currency converters en masse to people for the last year.
Most prices are set so they have a nice psychological point. This is why cars in the US are adversied as $19,999 and not 20 grand. Without a E$.25 coin, the price of coffee isn't going to .75 but will soon go to 1.00.
Yes, and the danger of new psychologigal prices in fact making things more expensive has been greatly discussed. This is why shops have been required to also list all prices in Euros for the last year, even if the Euro wasn't available back then. Even if this probably doesn't eliminate price increases, it probably limits them somewhat since the people who noted the previous prices in Euros will notice if they suddenly are "rounded up" to a psychologically attractive price, and put pressure on the shops.
Probably because an 'e' is very ambigous.
I'll keep using that (although I'd rather have stuck to using marks.. eu sucks, a fscking megacorp lobbying organization).
That's one opinion, there are more of them. I think most of them are unrelated to the Euro itself and are more about the EU and EMU. Even EU opponists probably appreciate the fact that they don't have to exchange currencies when they go abroad in Europe, one would think, and that price levels are easier to compare.
(And I couldn't have thought of a worse name for the currency...)
Remember that it has to be easily pronouncable in a lot of languages. Given that, "Euro" (which should be pronouncable as an abbreviation of "Europe" in a lot of languages) is not so bad.
Also, usually all characters already have a defined meaning. Adding an additional meaning to a character would most likely only cause confusion. Clearly a new symbol has its place, it's after all one of the world's most powerful currencies. If you question why Euro needs its own symbol, you should also ask yourself why the US Dollar or the British Pound need their own symbols.
I'm sick and tired of this "argument". Just because Red Hat Linux says "Linux" on the box, some conspiracy theorists always seem to like to jump to the conclusion that they are denying other GNU/Linux distibutions. This can only be true if you think that stating:
FooDistro is a Linux distribution
implies
The only Linux distribution is FooDistro
Hint for the clueless: Just because A includes B doesn't mean that B is all part of A. The statement "A includes B" is still true even if A only includes part of B, and even if also C and D include B.
Just because I sell a bag of potatoes and label it "Potatoes" doesn't mean I deny the existance of all other potatoes in the world, nor that I'm denying the fact that anyone else is selling potatoes. It is just information that the bag includes potatoes.
>>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;
Only because most people who use Linux are nerds. Honestly, can you say that typing
It wasn't me who wrote that. I just quoted the poster I replied to. Needless to say, I don't agree with him.
What is "bloated and goofy"?
Changing compiler during the same distro version cycle and breaking binary compatibility during the same cycle probably wouldn't be a very clever thing to do. Besides, gcc 3 still isn't that suitable as a platform compiler last I heard, it doesn't compile glibc etc.
It's not just about Mplayer versus Joe Barr, it's about a lot of annoyed Mplayer users on major GNU/Linux platforms versus a few Mplayer developers with their own political agenda (anti-gcc-2.96-rh) and their desire to use the software project for false statements and pure FUD to support said agenda. Whatever they are using their power and influence for, it's certainly not about fair play.
As for Joe Barr, he seems to be exhibiting the typical Microsoft attitude of "if enough people use it, everyone should support it." He says that gcc 2.96 must be supported because it comes installed by default on his Mandrake box. That's like a Windows user telling me that my project has to work perfectly on Windows XP or that it has to work perfectly on an ATI card (since they are so popular). Think about it. Should developers allow popularity to dictate what they do? My answer is no. Do what you think is right, don't allow the dominant software to control your actions.
Your argument is flawed. This is not about not working flawlessly on all configurations and systems, this is about spreading blatant lies and FUD.
Joe Barr's argument that gcc 2.96 should be embraced because it is installed by default on distribution only makes sense if the devs are in the business of pleasing customers. But as Joe has obviously forgotten, these devs don't have customers. And they probably don't care about annoying potential users either.. and why should they?
Maybe because no contributor/developer is born as a contributor? Most of them start as users, and the Mplayer project's attitude towards users is rude, to say the least.
2 - Regarding the devs' inflammatory comments in their FAQ ... well, to put it bluntly, I often feel exactly the same way that they do when people ask me incessant questions. The only difference is I force myself not to put my true feelings in the FAQ. Devs are humans and they lose patience and get annoyed.
Yes, but by putting their rude remarks towards users asking questions on their web page, they are showing their arrogance towards all users, not just the one(s) that asked a particular question. Even if a rude remark on a mailing list is bad to begin with, putting the same attitude everywhere on the home page is making it many times worse.
Let's face it, should they really be responsible for answering questions about installing shared libraries when it is a more general linux issue and not something specific to MPlayer?
No. There's a major difference between answering "I'm sorry, installing shared libraries is a general Linux topic and is thus out of the scope of this documentation. Please read the manuals for your distribution or other documentation on the Internet" instead of calling users stupid and lusers.
In fact, on a more broader scope, should they really be responsible for answering anyone's questions at all? If you said yes, then I invite you to think about why you said yes. Probably the only reason you can come up with is because "If they are mean to their users, than their users will leave and they won't have any users anymore." Fair enough.. but do the MPlayer devs really care if anyone uses their stuff? They probably don't frankly.
Quite obviously not. The problem is that all contributors are beginners at some point. Thus there's certainly no need to call users names or being otherwise unpolite, even if you don't want to answer all questions yourself.
Any dev who works on free software for the sake of providing a quality product for Mr. Newbie quickly becomes depressed and stops working on the project.
That's not necessarily the case. One doesn't have to answer all users' questions. In my experience, a good FAQ is a good start. If you don't want to answer all questions a short pointer to where the information could be found is a good start to make people "go away". Being rude is not a part of this, it's perfectly possible to give an "look for information elsewhere" answer without being rude.
Only those devs who work on free software for their own amusement, interest, needs, etc. are those who can endure for long periods of time.
In my experience, there's usually no conflict in creating software that you like yourself and that can also be usable by others without insulting them, or continuing to spread information that many people have already pointed out is very untruthful.
The bottom line is, that users of free software often create more headaches for developers of free software than benefits. If that statement shocks you, I'd encourage you to think about it for a while ...
Only if you divide the world into a "we developers", "them users" mindset. This is usually far from true, in particular it doesn't take into account that a person can be both at the very same time, and that noone is born as a contributor/developer.
Do you have a link to the specific page with their response to the article? Also, why do you regret? Personally I think that the compiler warning is still as much FUD as ever before, and no excuse from the Mplayer developers will change that.
There is no law that says they must be all sweetness and light to users who give them no thanks half the time, no help almost all the time, and no money all the time.
No, there sure is no law about that, and sure they are perfectly free to annoy and make fun out of users. But that wasn't my point. My question was "Why"? Besides of general advantages of being polite, most people are not born to be contributors or developers and start as users at some point, and thus it should be in their best interest to try to be polite at least for this reason.
They wrote the software, it is a priveledge they gant you to be able to use the software they put so much time into. Be thankful you get that priveledge, but don't expect the be waited on hand and foot.
I know this, thanks, I don't guarantee support on my free software contributions either, although I try to do the best I can. But there's a lot of difference between the issue of providing support or not, and being deliberately rude against users and spreading FUD.
Easily solvable by producing different binaries. Binaries for ALL possible configurations is obviously not an option, but binaries for some tested configurations is a good start.
Really, this is a moot point for not allowing binaries. The second issue you mention is the real issue:
Secondly, there are legal issues with binary distribution. The source of mplayer is legally distributable. But because many of the licenses covering files in the project do not allow binary distribution, it's illegal.
Compiling is not hard, and most people who use linux quickly find it easy as a Windows user's step-by-step installs with an InstallShield application. Very little difference.
Actually, there are major differences. Both an InstallShield solution on Windows and a package manager package on GNU/Linux will integrate seemlessly in most cases with the operating system by providing it's own entry in the add/remove software panel in Windows or the system package installer/updater/remover of your choice on your GNU/Linux distribution. In the case of both Windows and GNU/Linux, the installed files on the system will permit easy removal of the piece of software itself and all its files, or in the case of GNU/Linux package managers, both easy removal and upgrading and querying of various parameters. Easy upgrading is a key feature for a lot of people, not just beginners.
Then maybe he should:
That the reader of the FAQ in 99.9% of the cases most likely isn't the person(s) that annoyed him with this question is probably more the reason to stay polite and not try to make fun of people or put them off.
However, everyone I've ever talked to on the mailing list is consistently friendly and helpful.
That may be the case, but the purpose of a FAQ is after all to help people avoid having to ask questions on the mailing list, and a lot of people try to read the FAQ before asking on the mailing list. Even more a reason to stay polite. An unfriendly tone of voice in the FAQ doesn't help getting people with valid questions or interesting feedback get interested in the mailing list either.
The only reason that anyone could really call MPlayer controversial is because they had some lisencing issues a while back, because of incompatible lisences in (if I remember right) the OpenDivX portion of the program.
No, there are lots of other reasons, the rudeness towards users and compiler warnings with false information being major parts. Not many software projects try to avoid having users by being arrogant towards them or include false compile-time warnings with the only purpose of spreading FUD about another software project.
What has building a good movie player for GNU/Linux to do with being arrogant towards users and providing compiler warnings with blatantly false information that only serves my own political agenda? I'm not familiar with the author of the article, but the article summarizes my and many other users' experiences with Mplayer, their documentation, and responses from developers quite well.
AFAIK, gcc-rh 2.96 has compiled all released, stable kernels just fine, from kernel 2.4.x and up. What's the point? What does it have to do with Mplayer and why does Mplayer need to issue a warning about this compiler? Why doesn't it have a warning for gcc 3, which also has had kernel compilation problems?
You are free to call it anything you like... gcc2.96, gcc 2.96, gcc-rh 2.96, rh-gcc 2.96, gcc 2.96-rh, and so on. Pick anyone you like. It's still an excellent compiler (maybe currently the best free one) and one that is used by at least two major GNU/Linux distributions. It still doesn't answer the question why the Mplayer developers would need to issue a warning and refuse compilation unless you pass a special flag and type in a lie?
http://www.bero.org/gcc296.html has some relevant facts regarding gcc 2.96, I really recommend that page.
Judging from all people I know that have compiled Mplayer with gcc-rh 2.96, that seems to be the general trend. The Mplayer warning seems to be misleading at best and a blatantly false accusation at worst.
Yes. Many people are considering it a better compiler than most gcc:s in the past because it is less sucky and less buggy in a lot of areas. Also, it still (AFAIK) has an edge over gcc 3 in that it compiles glibc and such.
I also did a bit of google-ing about this warning in mplayer, and AFAIK some people were a bit angry that 2.96 has been singled out (probably just because it's a RH release) I wonder if the reasons for so prominently warning people about 2.96 are at least in part political...
They are only political. There used to be problems with the Mplayer code but those have been corrected, but the warning wasn't removed (most likely because of the Mplayer developers' own political agendas and so that they would not looose too much face).
Maybe that's why it would be a good idea to use "64 MiB" instead.