Re: GStreamer regression analysis [was: GNOME and GStreamer]

[Elijah Newren <newren gmail com>]

On 1/16/06, Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas apestaart org> wrote:
> > I think Thomas mentioned this too in this thread.  You two are
> > probably right and have a better memory than me, so I went off to find
> > it.  I had a hard time, though, could you point me to it in the
> > archives?  What I found was
> > http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2005-August/msg00286.html,
> > which is similar but comes across differently than what you two are
> > saying now.
>
> I'm not sure it was ever put to mail that way, though it certainly was
> discussed on IRC and such.
>
> The discussion ended at
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2005-August/msg00321.html
>
> To sum up that last part of that thread, it says:
> - Ronald would like GNOME 2.12 to ship with 0.8.11 plugins, so that the
> "promised" DVD support is actually up to snuff
> - He also mentions that given that he's going to the US, and will not
> have a DVD drive, he won't be able to do any coding related to DVD's
> after that release
> - So maintenance on it would have to be taken up by the GStreamer
> community/Fluendo.  (I'm not really sure why Ronald there said Fluendo -
> obviously Fluendo as a company cannot directly work on DVD support,
> given that we've always made it clear we're working on a for-sale closed
> implementation of a DVD player.)
>
> I'm pretty sure nobody volunteered to maintain Ronald's DVD
> implementation, and if memory serves me right some people from the
> release team were told.  But even if there's no record of that fact, I
> would say it's implied given the thread on this you're linking from.

Actually, I agree -- it does seem implied after thinking it through
again like this.  Given that and your previous reservations, I'd
personally agree that the DVD regressions are being counted much too
hard against GStreamer (of course, I tend to think they are anyway
given that I watch them so rarely)

> I don't see anyone else out there currently who would take on the task
> of porting and polishing Ronald's DVD work. So I would say that if
> GNOME thinks DVD support from inside totem is a blocker issue, I
> suggest you stick to GStreamer 0.8.  And realistically speaking, if
> GNOME is not targetting anything more than the home user market that
> has no problems with enabling various add-on repositories of
> questionable code, then this route will maybe work out better, modulo
> the random unfixable crashes.

Well, personally, I'm leaning strongly towards 0.10 with everything
I've read, but I think this is something the community should decide;
we need to discuss on d-d-l.

> That only leaves me with the sour taste in my mouth of a Free Software
> project bending over and taking it from behind from the non-free-content
> providers.  Now excuse me while I go home and watch a movie on my
> PlayStation :)

Hehe.