questions of the day

Why do lots of OpenBSD developers treat you as an asshole if you have a different opinion then them?

Related to the above: Why does ALSA run even on Pulse Audio or Jack, but not on BSD?

Why does the absolute favorite WE end up last in the most prestigious league?

Why are all the decadent people only talk about what we need to do and not about what they will do themselves?

Related also to the above, but mostly to the party yesterday where I met lots of friends from school: Why do so many people seem to forget/bury their childhood dreams once they start a family?

When will I finally get a new unstable Swfdec release out?

9 comments ↓

#1 Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen on 06.15.08 at 20:42

Considering myself decadent, I would like to counter you claim since you obviously did not read my last post (or more precisely; the wiki page I linked to). To quote myself: “… I am willing to work on both myself.”. Taken from http://live.gnome.org/MikkelKamstrup/Gnome3Vision

About childhood dreams – I have two children and I have not given up my youth-dream (I didn’t really have any childhood ones) – to become a FOSS hacker. As to the question about why I haven’t dropped it..? I guess I just like hacking, so why would I stop?

#2 Cyrille Berger on 06.15.08 at 21:18

Since when PulseAudio and Jack are OS ? Or is BSD a new sound system ? Obviously I am playing the dumb, but seriously, compare what is comparable. The question would become: does alsa works on an other OS than Linux ? Does something that hold the “l” of Linuw works on an other OS than Linux ? Is there a need for ALSA on BSD ? As far as I am concern, sounds work pretty fine on BSD without ALSA (a claim that you can’t allways make on Linux with ALSA)…

#3 Joe on 06.15.08 at 21:22

>> Why do lots of OpenBSD developers treat you as an
>> asshole if you have a different opinion then them?

Umm, that’s a good question. I would love to know about it too. :o

>> Related to the above: Why does ALSA run even on
>> Pulse Audio or Jack, but not on BSD?

ALSA is Linux speific. OSS is a lot better and available to many different UNIX platforms. Also, OSS’s API is simpler and easier to use; better documented.

>> When will I finally get a new unstable Swfdec
>> release out?

When will you? :-))

#4 BC on 06.15.08 at 22:22

Re the decadents: because GNOME puts too much emphasis on people who can write code, and most visionaries can’t write code.

Re dreams: because kids suck all the energy out of you, and by the time you’ve got rid of them you’re either too old or exhausted to care about your dreams any more. If your dreams don’t involve kids, why have kids in the first place?!

#5 otte on 06.15.08 at 22:25

Cyrille, Joe: ALSA works on any OS that Pulse or Jack run on, as you can just make sound go through those. So ALSA works on Windows, OS X or indeed any BSD. It’s fascinating that the meme that it’s Linux only still makes the rounds. The BSD people would save so much time if they just made all apps use libalsa to talk to their precious sound system instead of half-heartedly fixing all ALSA using apps to also have an OSS backend.

But knowing the BSD people, they’d rather invent ABSA than go ALSA.

#6 JustAGuy on 06.15.08 at 23:26

If ALSA can work on BSD, by way of Pulse, shouldn’t the BSD developers just cut out the middleman, and let applications support Pulse/Jack directly?
What are the advantages of having your application talk to libalsa, which talks to libpulse, which (hopefully) talks to your sound drive?

#7 Massimiliano on 06.16.08 at 12:31

> Why are all the decadent people only talk about what
> we need to do and not about what they will do
> themselves?

There is at least on case, where I can give you an explanation.

I most cases “decadent people” are simply not good programmers, or they aren’t programmers at all.

You are programmer and you do the programmer.
They are end-users and they do the end-users.

If they aren’t good programmers, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have clue on how software should work.
They know what they want from their software, and they know where a software “sucks”, or lacks something.
Software is merely done by programmer, for end-user, and the last word goes to end-user.

When you’ll create software only for yourself, end-user will have nothing to say.
For instance, until pidgin developers waste their time giving support to sametime, or to zephir, or to groupwise (always in beta status), instead of concentrating on voice chat and video chat, I’ll be glad to continue blaming them, and tell them, that kopete, amsn, gyache and skype already have voice and video.
And I’ll tell them: you’re good programmers, but you’re doing things that really sucks :)))

cheers to all.
Massimiliano

#8 troll on 06.16.08 at 14:30

Hey, don’t mix openBSD developers into the issue. Everyone knows they were dropped on their heads as babies…

#9 Lucian on 06.17.08 at 13:22

I really needed the kick in the ass about childhood dreams right now, thanks.

How about you just ignore the bsd folks and let them port swfdec if they want it?