Some thoughts about the new "spirit" of AutoGK

[Darksoul71]

Hi all,

I think someone´s gonna "ban" me for this one, delete the posting or gives me a strike.

To put it frankly:
:devil: I DO NOT CARE !!!!:devil:
I think that doom9´s bb is a quite democratic forum. "We" as a community have supported a lot of tools. Support mostly works the same way:
- Developer releases tool
- community gives feedback
- tool gets better
- community gives more feedback
- tool get better until developer sees no further enhancement possibilites.

Well just as a rough description.

len0x has choosen a new "milestone" approach for AutoGK. I dislike it and I wrote some statements about this. After len0x closed the last thread, I decided to write him two PMs which I rather want to share with you. Make up your mind about my statements and his...

PM1:
Hi len0x,

just came back from having a few beers with an old friend of mine.
As you´ve closed the thread I´ve decided to send you a last PM.

This is nothing personal. I don´t know you. You don´t know me.
PERIOD.

I just expressed my opion. Nothing more but also nothing less.

If you do a quick forum search based on my nick you´ll find out very quickly that I´ve often stayed in some quite close contact to TheWef and DSPGuru as well. Now, that I am father of a 6 month old daugther and having a fulltime job as software quality guy, I think I have some serious background for my statements. I had to earn money for a living during my studies. I did so a full-time developer but I did it in a completely different area:

Speech synthesis tools vs. Audio / Video-Tools
(Full-time) (Sparetime)

My main motivation ? I did most of the tools as I needed them myself !!!

Sharing them with other peoples was just a "side-product".

Back on your "final" comment:


quote:
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Exactly as your - that you should not make any assumptions about me unless you know me personally (or making personal advice while we at it).
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Ok, let´s start:
1st: I didn´t do any assumptions. My final question was an open question !!!!
To quote myself:

quote:
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When you earn money with coding, then why do you want money as motivation ?
Don´t you earn enough ?
Do you want the work for AutoGK being payed ?

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You could have answered: No, I don´t need money as main motivation but I want have some "monetary feedback" to support my work. Well, fine ! I could have lived with this answer but IMHO your statement shows me that I have been correct:

To quote yourself:

quote:
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What other motivation can you have when you spend the whole day coding already for money? You just get used to it and don't wish to waste the time when its no longer your hobby.

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Well, then take my advice. If coding AutoGK isn´t your hobby anymore: Quit working on AutoGK and GK !!!

Enjoy your free time. Go out with your friends. Take a walk on the beach. Whatever....

There´s so much fun to explore without a PC

Just don´t tell people stuff like: "I´ll set a "milestone" of XXX $ and I´ll start to code the promised features when you´ve "donated" enough. Isn´t the more true nature of your motivation that you are fed up with supporting GK and AutoGK and need some $$$ motivation to push you any further ? Just a question ! Answer it for yourself !


quote:
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P.S. There is a big difference between professional and non-professional coders that cannot be seen from outside unless you're not in this business for a while. These days too many ppl call themselves "developers" but I don't want to comment on that.
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When I say developer, I mean developer. I´m a "developer at heart". I´ve just choosen the more schematic approach of developing called SLC as my job but still know how to do serious coding. The guys I refered to are people I work with every day. I know that they are coding by heart (if you get the picture). So please don´t make any assumptions either.

Now ban me, flame me, whatever...

Sincerely yours,
D$

PM2:
Your final statement in the closed thread makes it even worse to me:

quote:
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*Edit* I think the whole thread started as offtopic and now completely non-related to the forum discussion, so I'll close it.
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Ask yourself: How can a discussion of the "spirit" (more or less the main motivation of any freeware project) be offtopic ?????

I personally think you have pushed / try to push AutoGK in an area which is not really covering any of it´s original spirit.

You´ve decided a monetary approach to "support" your development by using a thrusty tool "we" as the doom9-community have used very long ago before we even have known "len0x".

In fact I´ve asked TheWef quite some time ago to release the Sources of GKnot so I could do a "scaled down" version of GKnot in order not to scare away newbies. (look here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22276)

You´ve choosen a similar approach and pushed it quite far but....

As ubk said: "Delay it, and it will be too late."

And I assume in terms of DivX/XVid it´s already too late......

Although this might change with an increasing public need to "transcode" HD content so it fits on ordinary DVD-R/+R but for europe HD-content is quite dead right now.

[Doom9]

Why even bother if you're not using the application? It's like me giving advice to Philip Morris about their smokes.. pointless.

I think the approach is interesting. Check the DVD-RB forum.. over there people are complaining about non working things and "promising" to donate once that and that has been done. len0x' approach allows them to do just that.. put their money where their mouth is. Most free software has a limited lifetime, unless the source is handed over to somebody else when the initial developer is fed up. Commercial software is more successful in that way as there's a clear cut motivation to go on. len0x has chosen a middle ground here. Imho AutoGK has already gone beyond what it was intended for, so there'd be really no purpose in continued development.. I'm pretty convinced that what people are asking for in terms of new features isn't exactly what len0x personally considers useful and would implement just for fun. But using the milestone scheme, he has some monetary (money still rules the world... even the open source development is paid - mostly by academic institutions and a few companies that let their employees work on open source software on the company dime) motivation to implement those features that users want.

One of the examples you mentioned, DVD Shrink, is a good example on how a project can slowly die.. when is the last time you've seen a new feature in that application (there are still things missing).. IfoEdit has been stuck at the same place for ages. dvd2svcd's homepage is plastered with annoying ads. BeSweet is no longer actively developed. Those are a few alternatives you should keep in mind before comdemning anyone. If I knew you better, I'd hand over my site and forum to you for a few weeks so you can feel on your own how ungrateful such a job can be.. I'm not sure you can compare it to that of a developer of one of the much used tools around here, but from what I hear, their situation overall is not so different from mine.

It is an interesting question though.. what do you if the handful of thank yous you get isn't enough anymore and if your personal motivation isn't enough to go on. There's an ample number of examples I've encountered in the DVD backup world. Mostly in case of a non open source project, it left a large gap that eventually was filled, but ramping up the know-how usually takes a while.

Oh, and I don't really want to bring the subject up again, but I've heard "DivX is dead" ever since I started in this business. And today we have DivX capable DVD players from Sony, Philips, JVC, etc. I've also heard (S)VCD is dead, and while DVD burners are now dirt cheap, there's still quite a bit of traffic in the DVD2SVCD forum. And don't forget that HD DVD will use MPEG-4 (MPEG-4 AVC to be precise), and MPEG-4 AVC is also supported in DVB now. MPEG-2 is a good compression standard and will be around for a long time to come, but MPEG-4 isn't even at the place where MPEG-2 was when it really took off.. it took almost 10 years to get MPEG-2 to a really useful state.

And I have numbers to back that up: Number of new posts per form for the last 3 months: Number 1: DVD Rebuilder 3764 (MPEG2), #2: Avisynth general usage 2659(unrelated to any MPEG compression), #3: New A/V Formats 2340(no MPEG2!!), #4: XviD 2284(MPEG4!!), #5: General discussion 2210, #6: Ifo Editors 2052(MPEG2), #7: Realvideo 1420

So let that be the last on that subject (MPEG2 vs MPEG4). You can bring it up again in 5 years and then we'll see where we're at.