lysdexic @ lysdexic @programming.dev

Posts

65

Comments

357

Joined

2 yr. ago

It’s not that they made a big report. It’s that they, a multi-billion dollar company,

Why do you think this is even relevant? Again, does your attitude towards a run of the mill ticket change if you change who filed it? Why are you outraged because some random grunt from company A or B filed an issue instead of random joe X? Would you be commenting here if the very same person who filed the issue had done so with a personal account without identifying or disclosing their employer?

It’s that they do nothing for the project but expect the world from it.

I'm sorry, where does ffmpeg demand contributions or retributions from anyone who downloads or distributes their project? Aren't they explicitly distributing their work without asking anyone to do or give anything in return? I mean, isn't that the whole point of FLOSS?

More surprisingly, we see guides on how to contribute to FLOSS projects which state in no uncertain terms that filing bug reports and even run exploratory tests to give feedback to maintainers counts as contributing to the project, but somehow you've flipped over even the core principles to make it sound like a cash grab.

It’s not that Microsoft isn’t allowed to use ffmpeg, it’s that they start demanding quick service.

I'm not sure what experience you have in maintaining any somewhat popular FLOSS project, but as I said in other posts the way random users demand features and fixes in these circles already became a meme in FLOSS circles. We're talking about insults and belligerent attitudes towards whole projects in abstract and maintainers in particular, to the point maintainers end up burning out and quitting.

Knowing this, complaining that a particular request was described as high-priority as if this was unacceptable, fully knowing that this doesn't even represent a remark that's out of line given the baseline, is something that makes no sense at all. It sounds as an lame attempt to be outraged about something.

Imagine if you gave away some old clothes to some Charity and they called you and said “Some of the socks have holes in them and we need you to come over here and fix those holes ASAP because we want to sell them in our used clothes store”. What would be your reaction to that?

I think your hypothetical scenario doesn't match the issue being discussed in a few key aspects.

You're giving old clothes with no expectation of return. Why then get pissed because someone is using your clothes without paying you for them?

Then,if you make it your point to put up a system for everyone to file tickets pointing problems with the clothes you're giving away, why are you whining that the system is being used as it was designed to be used?

It's perfectly fine if you feel the need to prioritize your work based on your criteria alone, and anyone else's input is at most a suggestion. That's what everyone expects of it, too. But don't throw a tantrum when someone uses your work precisely as you told the world to use it.

Companies hate giving out cash. Even if it’s for software they critically need.

I think for most cases getting the cash is the easy part, and the hard part is getting all the paperwork in place to validate payments to random external entities. If that was easy, nothing would stop any low-level manager from making cash payments to random users with a GitHub account.

I don’t think the ffmpeg maintainer is complaining that Microsoft is using ffmpeg, rather that they are opening “high priority” bug reports based on customer complaints.

Users can only assign priority to issues they create themselves if they are explicitly authorized to assign priorities.

If you provide access to that field but then complain that bug reporters use that field, you're complaining about how you misconfigured your service, not how end users are using it.

Are there any other people targeted in this sort of complain, or is a specific company being singled out just because some low-level grunt filled in a field in a bug report?

Microsoft have every right to fix the bug themselves and the maintainer has every right not to.

Yes, it does. You do too, and so do I.

Does it make sense to you for me to attack you for this?

And how about any person submitting a bug report? Is it ok to pile up on them for not fixing it themselves?

If you change the names, is your attitude any different? If it is, then you have a problem on your hands, and it's a personal problem.

There’s a difference between creating something and giving it to the world and being on the hook to help them solve their business problems.

I think you're extrapolating things that aren't there. If you had any experience contributing to any semi-successful floss project you'd be ver aware that asking for fixes is as common as filing bug reports. This is not a Microsoft problem, it's a staple of FLOSS project management.

Why do you think it's reasonable to single out a whole company for doing exactly what the community contribution process was designed to be and achieve? On any case you see FLOSS proponents arguing that filing bug reports and troubleshooting problems counts as contributions to improve a project. Yet, here we are attacking someone for doing just that, because of what exactly? Do you think ffmpeg would be in a better shape if the likes of Microsoft didn't reported bugs?

Completely disagree. This is how it works, Microsoft get software for free but they have no authority to prioritise other people’s scheduling

I don't know where you're getting the prioritization issue. Anyone in the world who is able to create an issue in a bug tracker can claim anything, but it's always the people doing the bug triages who determine priorities. It means exactly as it means: nothing.

The "is this fixed yet" posts in bug reports by now is a meme in the floss world.

I think you're trying too hard to find something to be outraged over.

I think the maintainer just viewed the bug report as tone deaf. Microsoft is a trillion dollar company and apparently relying on this library without a support contract.

I think this mentality shows a clear dissonance between how maintainers are licensing their software and what are their expectations in terms of retribution from users of their software.

If they release a software package with a license that explicitly states that they allow the whole world to use it freely without any expectation if return, they cannot complain afterwards that some particular people in the world end up using it.

Likewise for bug reports.

If they want to get paid because the software they have been releasing to be used freely by everyone is being used freely by a specific company then they need to get their shit together and release it under a license where they explicitly state their terms. This is crítical for everyone involved, specially end users, because we need clarity on these terms.

Yes. Multiple historical layers (...)

This is reaching a level of idiocy that's completely unheard of.

Just say you know nothing about what you're saying and you're completely oblivious, and sit out the rest of the discussion.

If Google were to start over, all of that would be thrown out. It just can’t be done.

To stress the importance of this very basic fact, people need to understand that even Google, a company with virtually limitless resources to rearchitect and rewrite any and all type of software project, made the call to avoid using major features offered by some programming languages, such as C++'s exceptions, because it could have unintended consequences on the company's legacy code base which they could not rewrite.

And here we are, reading fantastic claims over how complete rewrites are reasonable things while flipping compiler flags to harden legacy projects is unheard of.

Most software is built under non-ideal circumstances. Especially in the beginning there’s often tight deadlines involved.

Exactly this.

I think a bunch of people commenting in this thread on the virtues of rewriting things from scratch using the flavour of the month are instead showing the world they have zero professional experience working on commercial software projects. They are clearly oblivious to very basic and pervasive constraints that anyone working on software for a living is very well aware.

Things like prioritizing how a button is laid out over fixing a rarely occurring race condition is the norm in professional settings. You are paid to deliver value to your employer, and small things like paying technical debt are very hard sells for project managers running tight schedules.

Yet, here we are, seeing people advocating complete rewrites and adding piles of complexity while throwing out major features, and doing so with a straight face.

Unbelievable.

Yet the world is full of code that was replaced with less work than it would take to fix a single bug on the broken original.

Can you point out a concrete example? Because you're commenting on a discussion on an essay that documents several notorious examples that demonstrate the opposite point.

It’s a way of saying “these are wrong and should be deprecated.”

They aren't wrong. No one in their right mind just throws away years of work delivering a stable production project just because a random clueless person in the internet said something. It's lunacy.

But in my humble opinion, those projects shouldn’t really exist.

What's the point of your opinion if not only do these projects exist but they are also pervasive?

You cannot wish things away and pretend reality is something different.

Even following the guidelines, modern C++ is just a huge pile of half-finished ideas.

You're making it pretty clear that you are completely oblivious to what C++ is, what are the differences between C++ versions, and what are the real world issues solved by each new version.

I would ask you to clarify your persona clams by providing a concrete example to back each of your statements, but I know you have none.

Well ok, but the concern is about the weaknesses, Mr. Stroustrup.

I don't think these discussions on "weaknesses" come from a place of intelectual honesty. None of these arguments even touches the fact that there are already a myriad of freely available static code analysis tools and memory profilers that do a very good job catching memory safety issues.

For some unexplainable reason, these criticisms of C++ always focus on a single strawman: these tools do not exist and no developer in the world cares about the topic.

So how fucked am I for starting to learn cpp as my first language, or is this a later down the road thing to worry about?

I don't see why you should be concerned, except that no professional software developer is limited to use one specific programming language.

Even if you pay attention to the disaster prophets in the crowd, which are mainly comprised of fanboys implicitly and explicitly promoting their pet language/frameworks, C++ dominates all aspects of the computing ecosystem, which means that in the very least the whole world needs to maintain existing C++ projects to continue to work. See COBOL for reference.

Such a braindead exercise to see Redis follow suit

I agree, this sounds like a desperate cash grab.

I mean, cloud providers who are already using Redis will continue to do so without paying anything at all, as they're using stable versions of a software project already released under a permissive license. That ship has sailed.

Major cloud providers can certainly afford developing their own services. If Amazon can afford S3 and DynamoDB, they can certainly develop from the ground up their own Redis-like memory cache. In fact, Microsoft already announced Garnet, which apparently outperforms Redis in no small way.

So who exactly is expected to pay for this?

${CORPORATION} has profited off of Redis without giving much back (...)

I don't understand this blend of comment.

If you purposely release your work as something anyone in the world is free to use and change to adapt to their own personal needs without any expectation of retribution or compensation, why are you complaining that people are using your work without any retribution or compensation?

More to the point, why are you singling out specific adopters while leaving out the bulk of your community?

It makes absolutely no sense at all.