[vorbis] Why is Vorbis development slow?

[Ralph Giles]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 03:55:01AM -0700, SwiftBiscuit wrote:

> 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.

Who? Who is going to do something about it? If you're talking about 
documenting the reference vorbis *encoder* to lower the barrier to entry 
for contributers seeking to improve it, I agree documentation would do 
that. I too learn better from documentation than from code. But who's 
going to write it? Monty could easily, but we'd rather he just improve 
the encoder. That's a more efficient use of his skill and talent and 
more interesting to him as well. As a stand-in for the project's 
reliance on Monty's immense abilities, the same argument applies.

The handful of others who've read some of the reference implementation? 
Myself, or the tens of thousands who could just read the code and 
document it? We have not been motivated to do so. This is a volunteer 
project; we cannot compel contributions. We can only state our 
priorities for what interest that meets in others. You've stated your 
opinion in this manner, and we've stated ours. That's how open 
source works. There is no responsibility on the part of the Xiph.org 
Foundation, its nebulous and associate contributors, or anyone else to 
meet your priorities. That responsibility is *yours*. So if you want 
documentation of the reference encoder, write it yourself, or find 
someone willing to do it, or as jack suggested, provide the funds to 
pay someone to do it. It looks to me like you're also unwilling.

> I don't think that people have really
> *admitted* that it is a critical problem.

I don't think it is a critical problem. I agree it is a problem, but I 
don't see a solution to it other than what I've outlined above. You seem 
to think we have resources we don't.

 -r
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