FreeLists / argyllcms / [argyllcms] Re: New Bug with Eye One Pro built against Ubuntu libusb

[Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Le vendredi 28 décembre 2007 à 00:05 +1100, Graeme Gill a écrit :

> I think you'll find that I can choose how I want to play this game.

Sure you can. No one here thinks he can force you to do something you do
not want. My point was that free/libre software development is organised
around some conventions. If you follow those conventions other people
can work with you, if you don't you end up working alone with zero
support. And like any convention their value is not they're the best
possible solution but that you can rely on others to follow them.

A case in point is my Fedora Argyll CMS packaging. I had more or less
given up on it after fighting Jam (and losing). Then a month later here
comes Frédéric, who finishes the work for Mandriva without any prompting
on my part (I believe he found an old dump of my files on Google). I
work on it a bit more. The result is posted on the list. It also works
on Ubuntu. A Fedora reviewer adds some code fixes. The Policykit author
reviews argyll integration. A blacklist entry is added @kernel.org so
the Huey just works in later kernels (by an OpenSuse person IIRC).
Argyll licensing is audited by real lawyers. etc

Thus in less than a month a lot of work that needed to be done for a
long time got done by many different people affiliated to different
organisations. Without any prompting. Just because I posted some files
on a Google-indexed site, and because unlike current Argyll releases
those files followed conventions people were comfortable with.

That is the value in following the same rules as everyone else. No one
is going to write core Argyll code in your stead (ok some people may but
I can't promise it). Nevertheless a lot of peripheral work needs to be
done for core Argyll code to work properly on all systems (for
example, propagating the libusb or kernel changes Argyll relies on).
This work will only be done by others if you create the right conditions
for them to do it. 

Of course that's your choice. You may feel that changing your habits is
not worth it, that you get a better deal by following your own
conventions, doing all the integration work yourself on your own systems
with no third-party intervention. I respectfully disagree.

I don't think Argyll's current integration process is working (its code
didn't build and its binaries didn't run on my system before I massively
patched it). And I can promise you a lot of people won't ever help with
Argyll problems before it's integrated in major distributions. Few
people are interested in helping projects that don't bother getting
themselves packaged. The packaging bar is not high, thousands of
projects passed it a long time ago.

Happy new year,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot