[ogg-dev] OggPCM proposal feedback

Erik de Castro Lopo mle+xiph at mega-nerd.com
Sat Nov 12 15:36:14 PST 2005


Silvia.Pfeiffer at csiro.au wrote:

> Dear Arc,
> 
> I feel ashamed of the xiph community.


Hi Silvia,

My slant on this is slightly different.

The vast majority of Free Software and Open Source projects 
are meritocracies. Certain people get to positions of power
in these projects through a combination of good coding/
debugging/documentation and simultaneously an ability to
work well with the other people in the project.

Here in the Xiph community things are a little askew. The people
with the code (Monty, Jean-Marc, Josh Coalson etc and the Annodex
team) seem to let Arc (who has yet to show any contribution 
anywhere near the same league as any of the above) run the show
and trammple over people who show far more merit. I don't care
so much about me, I haven't contributed to Xiph, but I have 
earned the respect of many people through my other projects.
The kind of people I am concerned about is people like Zen
who has made *huge* and valuable contributions but then gets
pushed around by Arc.

Arc, its time to shit or get off the can. Show us some code!
Once you show that code be prepared for criticisms from 
people with far more experience than you. When you get
criticism, learn from it.

Oh, and forget about specs. I honestly don't believe that
anyone who doesn't code can write a software spec. An even
partially working trial implementation is worth more than
even the best spec on the planet.

Erik
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
  Erik de Castro Lopo
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"Arguing that Java is better than C++ is like arguing that grasshoppers 
taste better than tree bark." -- Thant Tessman


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