On Tuesday 15 October 2002 11:40, Marius Nita wrote:
> [...]
>
> > I don't mind if people decide to change things.  What I do mind is
> > spending weeks preparing for a release after
> > changing/revising/rewriting massive amounts of code, and then once
> > it's released someone just decides to scoop it up and readd their
> > changes.
>
> [...]
>
> > As I mentioned above, this started because of me being a bit annoyed
> > over some of the things that have been happening lately.
>
> This is obviously downright unfair, because xor was an important part of
> the 0.65 release. Saying that openbox "scoops up" your genius code is
> loaded with glibness and ignorance. This is the central part of my gripe
> with your statements. You get across the impression that you see us as a
> gang of charlatans looking to cheat you and steal from you.

I'm sorry if this is the impression I gave you.  I did not intend to hurt 
people's feelings.

> Looking at the blackbox code, I could also do like you and start
> bitching about you stealing our Font.cc, taking our Configuration.cc,
> modding it and calling it Resource.cc, taking our XAtom.cc, modding it
> and calling it NetWM.cc. I would also point out that while blatantly
> ripping off XAtom.cc, you didn't even bother fixing our very obvious
> design flaw: the use of reinterpret_cast. You ripped it verbatim. I
> could further point out that you took our ideas on using namespaces and
> a pretty direct rip of XEventHandler from the openbox3 repository.
> Looking at it that way, all your new blackbox code is ripped off from
> openbox, your only innovation being the fact that you made a lib/
> directory. You did all this while not bothering to patch us on any of
> our bugs or design flaws. Well, that's disheartening. Scooping up our
> stuff like that just ain't cool.
> (Remember, the issues in this paragraph were posed hypothetically.)

The Font.cc file showed up because we needed a Font class for the lib 
shaleh and I are putting together.  The actual class at the moment is very 
simple and incomplete, I plan on doing much more with it in the future.

The Resource.cc file is probably very similar to your Configuration.cc, but 
I did *not* take your code, modify it and then commit it as my own.  I 
wrote that class to be small and simple, without looking at other people's 
code.

The Netwm code is shaleh's code, so I will let him comment on it. (On a 
side note, the reinterpret_cast is probably wrong, and should be a 
static_cast instead, but I am not very knowledgable about C++ casts, so I 
can't say for sure).

The event handler class is a design decision I took since shaleh and I 
agreed that the Widget class I had originally written in my moving_target 
branch was too heavy.

We started using a single namespace because this is something that shaleh 
and I have discussed since before 0.65.0 was event started.  We wanted to 
have a way to keep the library code and the window manager code separate.  
To be honest, I didn't even know that openbox used namespaces.  I have 
never looked at the openbox code, so it is pure speculation on your part 
that I took your code and fitted to my needs.

Another thing that I do not have the time or desire to do is work on 2 
separate window managers heading in 2 separate directions.  The current 
focus for blackbox is to make the bt library complete enough to write 
small tools quickly.  I would only be guessing about the direction for 
openbox, so I won't add fuel to the fire with speculation.

> That kind of pales in comparison to the stuff we
> took from 0.65: some bugfixes and some rearrangement of the Workspace
> class. The fact that we bothered to sync was your benefit, not ours; by
> syncing we discovered bugs which resulted in fixes for you and your
> grand 0.65 release.

... and both shaleh and I are very grateful for those fixes.

> So you see? Things aren't black and white. Say thank you that you have
> (well, had) more than 2 pairs of eyes on your code, and other people are
> willing to patch you. Say thank you that we have a top-notch keygrabber
> that will work with your Netizen-less blackbox. Say thank you that you
> have a very similar code base to look at when you code a feature that we
> already have.

I am grateful that we get fixes like this from other people.  Blackbox 
would not be where it was today without such code contributions.

The keygrabber and reference code is something that I don't use, haven't 
looked at and can't really comment on.

> All of the sudden it looks like Openbox is a huge benefit to you, while
> Blackbox doesn't really help our users at all.
>
> It's all of the sudden become about _you_ and _us_ in some sort of a
> race. Openbox didn't start as some sort of Fork of Doom that was
> supposed to take you out of the "coding wms for free" business. Had
> shaleh accepted and incorporated the patches that the current openbox
> users wanted, Openbox wouldn't exist. It was started by the users, not
> by xor and woodblock.

I don't see how this is a race.  I am working on things that I want to work 
on, improving things that have been deficient in blackbox for a *long* 
time.  Only recently did I get the time to really start working on this.

> So please, stop complaining about the things that are beneficial to you.
> You being able to look at all of the openbox features is far more
> important than us being able to look at buggy rearranged code and man
> page patches. (No offense, Sean.) But maybe this has deeper
> implications... Are you pissed off that your users will now say "Oh,
> cool now blackbox does what openbox does" instead of frantically
> cheering your name?
>
> And don't take this the wrong way. I have a massive amount of respect
> for your work ethics and abilities. This time, however, you took me by
> complete surprize. If you would like to continute discussing the issue,
> perhaps you should outline the things that bother you. Calling Openbox
> "a hack" and saying that Openbox' ability to load user-designed xbm
> buttons is stolen from your menu code is pretty strange. Much less
> founded than if I said that blackbox cvs was a ripoff of openbox. Also
> the whole "scooping up" issue is garbage. Again, much less founded than
> if it was said the other way around.

The original reason that this started was mostly because of the text I saw 
on the openbox webpages this weekend.  The original text stated "Openbox 
was previously know as Blackbox."  That angered me a bit.  The feeling I 
got from reading this was that the openbox crew intended to replace 
blackbox.  I am pretty sure noone intended this, but it's just the feeling 
I got.

And then, I find out that openbox has implemented a feature (the 
configurable bitmaps) that I had been considering for blackbox (an idea I 
had while writing screwing around with stuff in my moving_target branch).  
Looking back at the irc log, I was a bit off base, and I should have been 
a little more compasionate and not quite so defensive (ie. "hey, that idea 
turned out to be pretty cool" instead of "hey, that was my idea, damnit").

I spoke my mind and stepped on a few toes with the comments I made on irc.  
I am sorry about this, I did not mean to start a shouting match between 
the 2 camps.  I'm sure we would much rather be looking at code :)

> Thanks for reading my novel,
>
> marius.

-- 
Bradley T. Hughes - bhughes at trolltech.com
Trolltech AS - Waldemar Thranes gt. 98 N-0175 Oslo, Norway


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