FESCo Meeting Summary for 20090424

[William Jon McCann]

Adam,

On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 9:59 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-05-03 at 01:59 +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
>
>> > Here's the other thing that gets me about this: okay, so you thought
>> > about the use cases you want to support and came up with a design.
>> > Great.
>> >
>> > But we don't even have that design yet. That design includes input
>> > switching and profile switching.
>>
>> Tell me where I wrote that:
>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VolumeControl#User_Experience
>>
>> <snip rant>
>>
>> *Where*
>>
>> I already asked this question when Will made the same assumption as you
>> did, during the Fesco meeting. The use cases we had didn't include any
>> need for profile switching.
>
> That just makes me question even more your competence to be doing the
> design; if you manage to come up with a design for a mixer application
> without considering the importance of digital output, well. Er.
> That's...um. My output device is connected digitally. So are zillions of
> others. That's why soundcards ship with S/PDIF outputs. Even cheap
> crappy onboard sound, where the manufacturers would gladly save a cent
> any old way, universally include S/PDIF now - because people want it.
> How were you expecting us to hear any sound?

This is getting crazy.  You are questioning Bastien's interface design
competence.  Pretty bold statement from someone, I suspect, many of us
have never heard of before.

Your rhetorical style isn't really helping here either.  Would be nice
if you stopped throwing around meaningless statistics (zillions) and
gave us some credit for actually knowing what the hell we are doing.
If only to give the impression that you know what the hell you are
doing.

> I suspect this whole process was managed by people who are great at
> interface design, and great at the software side of audio/video (which I
> know you are), but perhaps didn't think hard enough about what people
> actually do with audio hardware.

And your suspicion is wrong.  We've discussed these things many times.
 We've even had pretty heated discussions about it ourselves.
However, in order to move forward, we need to make choices.
Inevitably, we will not please everyone.

...
>> Yes, it's a
>> big omission, but that doesn't mean you're allowed to write off the
>> benefits we're bringing for a large number of users already.
>
> I'm not. As I said, I like those things. Which I was I was on the side
> which was supporting the compromise by which we would have those
> features AND the features g-v-c is missing. It's not frickin' rocket
> science!

Please read my first post again:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-April/msg02534.html

It is just not as simple as you make it out to be.  A great product is
not a list of features.  It must be designed.  When we use a
time-based release process we will NEVER have a perfect or great
Fedora release.  It just can't happen.  Fedora is the vanguard.  It is
the continual forward motion of our designs (mostly upstream ones).
We are *different* from Ubuntu and where you used to work.[1]  We
differentiate ourselves by having an uncompromising position on
freedom and design.  We don't ship non-free codecs even though (as you
say) zillions of people need them.  We ship the best of breed software
and software that represents the right way forward even when it isn't
yet perfect.  There are many technical reasons why we do this and why
it is good for us, upstreams, and informing/educating/engaging our
users.

But the principle reason is that it is the Fedora brand.

Jon

[1] Also since we are not creating a product where Ubuntu and Mandriva
are.  And if we want to change this there is a heck of a lot of work
to do.