>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fri Mar 21 22:32:42 2003 >> A much more realistic idea is why there is no source for >> cdrecord-ProDVD: >> >> =09Commercial companies steel my work and sell it secretly.
>Two observations: >1) Apparently, cdrecord doesn't fulfill the needs of a significant=20 >group of potential users. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a market for=20 >it. Calling bad guesses 'observations" does not help and does not make me believe that you are really interested in the toic.:-( It is mere that _other_ CD/DVD writing programs (specially on Win32) do not meet the needs of the customers so companies are interested to use cdrecord as the base fro a new 'product'. In addittion, commercial companies have a high level of criminal potential. If they like to create a product for several UNIX platforms they may either pay > 50000 US $ per year to GEAR or try to illegally use cdrecord. >2) Other FOSS projects (xvid comes to mind, see [1]) have=20 >succesfully used publicising of infringements to get the violating=20 >companies to comply with the license. It seems to be a very=20 >succesful tactic so far, but cdrecord can't use it apparently. It is hard to go this way and gong the way described in the attendum may not cause any change in behavior. You usually need to sue the violaters and this is hard to do and you will need a lot of money in advance. >It seems to me that this is a symptom of the way cdrecord=20 >development is done. cdrecord is open source (at least the CD-only=20 >version), but its development is done in the classical cathedral=20 >style. Open source isn't just about having the source available,=20 >it's about open development, it's about having a community of=20 >developers and users, and communication within that community.=20 I am sorry but it seems that you don't know what you are talking about :-( Cdrecord development is open to anybody but few people like to cooperate and have the neded skills. In order to cooperate, people need to know how to deal with SCSI and how to write portable programs. If people send me patches, they must make sense and need to be of apropriate quality. It I receive a patch that would cause me 1-4 weeks to integrate (mostly by a complete rewrite) it may take a long long time until I have the needed time for the rewrite. A constant cooperation is only present with Heiko (cdda2wav) and James (mkisofs). Both send changes that only need minor ( << 5 %) changes in order to get integrated. I would be happy if other people would be willing to help.. >There is no such thing as a cdrecord development community. There is=20 >no cdrecord-devel mailinglists where patches are sent to and=20 >discussed, there is no cdrecord-users mailinglist where people can=20 >get help from others in the community, and the developers (Joerg=20 >Schilling mainly) are very closed when they answer email, never=20 >explaining their answers. My answeres are as long as I have time. If people lik you and others are not even willing to help replying to the incoming mail, why do you like to make me believe that there is a potential for coders? In addition, there are frequent mail threads where people with missing background knowledge on portability send rants about my make system and portability guidelines. If people do not know how to make things better, they should better be quiet instead of sending destructive critics. >Without infrastructure and some help understanding what's really=20 >going on, no community will form. This means that cdrecord never=20 >reaps the benefits of its being open source, and it leads to forks=20 >and unhappiness between developers. A good example of that is the=20 >latest developments in the XFree86 community (see [2]). Proof that=20 >it can in fact work even for technically complicated projects is=20 >provided by the Gatos project [3] which aims to create drivers for=20 >capturing video using ATI cards, and has a nice and friendly=20 >mailinglist where users and developers can discuss anything related=20 >to the project). Another good example of the power of an active=20 >community is the reaction of the CDex community on NeoAudio.=20 >NeoAudio was a completely legal derived work, but it wasn't very=20 >nice. Read for yourself at [4]). ???? Tell me about any fork from cdrtools! There is none ..... except the joke from Mr. Rosenkranzer. >With all this and his bitter comments about not getting anything=20 >back for cdrecord being open source on this list in mind, I think=20 >it's Joerg who doesn't really understand open source. Or maybe he=20 It seems that you don't understand it :-( I am on open source since 20 years and I spend a lot of time on my sources. Believe me, would be happy about help! >does, but is just not half as good at managing a user community as=20 >he is at writing code. A couple of messages ago (bit hard to follow=20 >the thread since Joergs mail reader doesn't understand threading)=20 >he asked for a better solution for the stealing of cdrecord source: >"Give me a different _working_ way tp protect my code from being=20 >abused by commercial companies and I would even publish source." >Here's a way. It has proven itself to be succesful in a number of=20 >situations. But it requires a change in the way cdrecord=20 >development is managed and done, and users are treated. I'm not=20 >saying it should be done, just giving an option. Well, first find poeple who are willing to cooperate. ... and before, people should try to learn that supporting Cdrecord is not a 'cool job' but hard work. I just returned from a 8 day job at CeBIT: More than 4 days, I was geting in contact with new CD/DVD manufacturers or doing conversation to stay in contact. Where do you believe come the sample drives from? Where does the NDA free information comes from? It took me a whole year to convince e.g. Ricoh to give away the information for Just Link without forcing me to sign a NDA. Believe me, working on Open Source is a lot more than you seem to understand from it. Show me other open source projects that work better! Cdrdao does not support more than BurnProof. Check out how many drive/vendor specific features cdrecord includes. If you like to support cdrecord, you would need to be willing to read thousands of pages of documentation and talk to many people; otherwise you would just create a short living program but nothing with the durability and quality of cdrecord. >[1] http://www.xvid.org/press/press-20020822-en.html >[2]=20 >http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=3D03/03/20/1215243&mode=3Dt= >hread&tid=3D104 >[3] http://gatos.sf.net >[4] http://www.teammurder.com/archives/000205.html >--=20 >GPG public key: http://home.student.utwente.nl/l.e.veen/lourens.key J�rg EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) J�rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin [EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) chars I am J"org Schilling URL: http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
