[Xiph-Advocacy] Theora and others complains...

[xiphmont at xiph.org]

On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 10:30 AM, JorSol <mailing at jorsol.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 2:52 AM, Conrad Parker <conrad at metadecks.org> wrote:
ich you are welcome to attack. If you would like to do a larger
> > project, and you are a student, please propose a project for Summer of
> > Code (applications open March 24). If you would like to initiate a
> > fundraising campaign, please send your ideas to this list. If you
> > would like to donate money, please say so.
>
> > That's not a fair comment, nor are you in a fair position to comment.
> >
>
> Yes, I'm not in a fair position to comment, sorry if I misinterpreted the
> things... but has far I know, Thusnelda *is* an experiment for improve the
> encoder in the Theora trunk. Don't get me wrong I really have hopes in this.

I didn't read this as an attack, rather as some frustration at having
to wait to see good things :-)

> I'm aware that Monty has been working consistently on Thunsnelda, but if you
> see close, yesterday was the first commit in the month, almost a month after
> the last commit that was only one in Feb.

You assume it is the only thing I'm working on.  As one of the very
few full time or near-full-time Xiph folks, I split my attention many
ways and it tends to be in chunks of a week or two.  Thusnelda is back
to being the current chunk (with some Ogg distractions).

Also one of the large gaps was due to being out of net access for
nearly a month (New Zealand == land of no internet but many sheep).
Look at the size of that one commit-- it replaced a good third of the
bloody encoder.

>said that Monty is the only
> one that has been working on Thusnelda, you are all excellent devs, why
> Giles, Terriberry or anyone else is working on it?

Ralph is still concerned with mainline.  Derf is not currently
available to work on the code although his contribution is substantial
and informal (my Thusnelda work is substantially channeling Derf; I'm
an audio guy, not a video guy).

> > > This is no a just do it complain...  how can we help to make that
> happen?
> > > maybe if you do something like a fundraising for the cause would help?

Fundraising will likely never reach the point where we can pay salaries.

Also, what we really need is not more engineers.  We desperately need
business management and technical documentation people more than
anything.  Throwing more engineers at Xiph will complictae the problem
we have, which is all the high-powered engineers we have being
constantly distracted by .Org housekeeping and low-level technical
coordination.