[vorbis] Why is Vorbis development slow?

[SwiftBiscuit]

--- Carsten Haese <chaese at accesstoledo.com> wrote:
> Don't put words in my mouth just so you can disagree
> with me.
I do apologise, that is honestly what I felt you were
saying. 

> I said it's unfortunate that things are how they
> are, I'm not sure how you get "fine" from that.
I didn't feel there was any willingness to change how
things have been done for this past year. Anyway.

> I was simply trying to demonstrate that a
> detailed tuning manual is neither a necessary
> nor a sufficient condition for
> third-party contributions.
With honest respect Carsten, I think that is far from
being demonstrated. I would even say that the opposite
has been proven. The bottom line is that the past year
has delivered only the two tuning examples you cited.
For whatever reasons (I've agreed before that Monty's
work on portables was important) that is the bare
truth. Either things change or the next year will be
just the same.
Graham said in his email that he found tuning too
difficult, I certainly found it difficult. That's two
people who would have done tuning if we had found it
easier. Wouldn't that double the current number of
successful tuners? And double the number of people who
can hand out advice to potential tuners... etc.

> Since Monty is a finite resource, what would you
> rather have him do?
For a start I'd stop looking at the situation from a
Monty-centric point of view.
The first step is to admit that you have a problem, as
they say. It's been mentioned many times that the
problem is that everything depends on Monty, but there
seems to be a great unwillingness to *do* anything
about it. I don't think that people have really
*admitted* that it is a critical problem.

I described in an earlier email what I thought would
help, but I sent it to the list rather than Jack
because I hoped there would be other ideas. Maybe
better ideas.

<p>--- Graham Mitchell <graham at grahammitchell.com> wrote:
> If that (and the occasional specific question
> to vorbis-dev or on irc) isn't enough, then
> hacking on vorbis is not for you.
Well that approach would be fine if there piles of
folk lying around who were already doing Vorbis work.
the facts are that not enough work has been done on
Vorbis and it's lagging behind. Either Xiph attracts
more of your kind of Vorbis hackers, or they make it
easier for people less capable.

> So because the quality level isn't where you
> think it could be by now, Monty "isn't enough"?
Well, yes! I'm surprised this is even questioned. How
far would MP3Pro, or AAC have got if it were just one
guy working on it? It's staggering that Vorbis has got
this far when so many people seem happy to let Monty
carry nearly everything.
Thankfully there a handful of people with the
willingness and brains to help out, but that is not
'enough'. Not by a long chalk, no.

> I'll stick to bug reports, minor fixes in
> the tools, documentation and advocacy.
It's your choice and Vorbis is richer for your input.
Personally, since I see Vorbis as being in danger of
becoming irrelevant, I want to do something more effective.

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