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The developer responds to a comment: But many players are able to do it for years. with: If it's so easy, why are you not doing it? He's not just a butthol

The developer responds to a comment: But many players are able to do it for years. with: If it's so easy, why are you not doing it? He's not just a butthole, he's a stereotypical open source developer butthole. On the other hand, if he worked for Microsoft, he'd be claiming that it takes a PhD to do it...

Levitating 2y ago
In his defense, some commenters had a pretty rude attitude. You cannot demand developers to implement a feature or call them out on being lazy. Nobody even offered to research how other players accomplish this. They just expect that because they believe it can be done someome should do the work for them. At least Remi was actually andering questions on the forums. This attitude towards open source maintainers is what's getting them all burned out.
- KingMob 2y ago
  As a FOSS maintainer, I have sympathy for him, but as a communicator, I see he really failed to address multiple commenters pointing out that several other FOSS video projects had the feature. (At least in the first page of comments.)
- IshKebab 2y ago
  I don't think the other people commenting were being at all rude. They asked nicely if a feature would be possible. He replied with a blank "No" and from then on it was pretty much "but other players can do it so it must be possible" and him rudely and incorrectly asserting that it isn't and that anyway if it was why don't they do it if they want it so much. The correct response would have been something like "it's more difficult to do and in some circumstances it will have very bad performance so we haven't done it yet". This is classic "It's hard and I can't be bothered so I'll make up some technical reason why it's impossible". Programmers do this all the time and it's kind of annoying. (And yes I understand video coding and I know why it's more difficult in some cases.)
  - hobofan 2y ago
    I think the answer (read from between the lines) is more: "There is no way to make it work for the general case of all video formats, and we don't implement a feature unless it works for the general case, so we choose not to implement it at all. If that means that we don't have that feature for the file formats where it would works, that's a sacrifice that we are willing to take."
    - IshKebab 2y ago
      Agreed, and this is actually a really good point: > we don't implement a feature unless it works for the general cas I used to make that mistake a lot. My boss would say "can we do this", for example report memory usage per operation. And I would say "no because sometimes memory is shared between operations so it would be meaningless". In other words I couldn't do it perfectly so I said we couldn't do it at all. That's what the VLC guy is doing and I didn't realise until I worked with that boss that it is COMPLETELY WRONG! Just because you can't do it perfectly doesn't mean giving up entirely is the best you can do. In cases like this you can absolutely do something that works sometimes but not in every case and that is way better for users than just giving up. Lots of programmers fall into that trap though.
      - Levitating 2y ago
        VLC is able to abstract over a ton of extremely complicated codecs by providing some common tools that work for all of them. I guess if VLC has a feature, you can always expect it to work. That's their design choice. There's nothing "COMPLETELY WRONG" about that.
        spoaceman7777 2y ago
        The most entertaining part of this thread is that VLC is actually in the process of replacing its backend with the mpv-derived libplacebo. In the end, VLC has admitted defeat
        2y ago
- brettermeier 2y ago
  He really sounds like an asshole :D sorry for this stupid comment, but i had to tell.
The_Colonel 2y ago
The dev said they are happy to accept patch for this feature. Remember that you're not entitled to demand new features, as a (non-paying) user, you can't allocate dev's time to work on what you want.
- imiric 2y ago
  This card is played too often by developers who only want to work on features they personally find interesting or worthwhile. Yes, you realistically cannot implement everything every user wants, but at the same time your software is meant to solve problems. Keeping direct communication with your users, and understanding what they find useful or not, should be the driving force of the design and features of your app. FWIW, I've been on both sides of this discussion, as an OSS maintainer and user, and have experience with demanding users and arrogant and, yes, _lazy_ developers alike. Let's stop the narrative that users don't have the right to request features because they're not paying customers, and that this is driving developers to burn out. Communication is key to producing useful software regardless of its license. OSS development in particular is not just about throwing some code online and forgetting about it.
  - mnsc 2y ago
    You have been a maintainer and yet you said "your software" instead of "the software you are maintaining". When you maintained an OSS project, did you accept pull requests from lots of contributors or was it a solo show? If so, did you get burned out?
  - umbra07 2y ago
    A FOSS project can be FOSS and refuse all other contributions. FOSS does not make any requirements towards how the creator/main contributor handles and treats users, submitted patches, and feature requests. So no, FOSS users have zero inherent right to request anything - until the creator allows for it. I agree that taking that kind of "closed" approach is not helpful.
    - imiric 2y ago
thrdbndndn 2y ago
You need to send an email to the admin and ask for approval in order to register an account on VLC website to report bugs. This says it all.
- fragmede 2y ago
  It says it's a project on the Internet that has to deal with spam. Are you reading more into it than that?
- usr1106 2y ago
  That's the result of being successful for wide non-technical audience. The signal over noise would approach zero if everybody could create a bug report when something does not work as they wanted. Have you tried to create a meaningful bug report (not feature request) that has not been previously reported and were rejected? If so your complaint is valid. I haven't so I don't know.
  - thrdbndndn 2y ago
    > The signal over noise would approach zero if everybody could create a bug report when something does not work as they wanted. I hear you, but it could be something not so extreme. Lots of even more popular projects work fine with bug reporting system on GitHub, which everyone has access to. > Have you tried to create a meaningful bug report (not feature request) that has not been previously reported and were rejected? No I don't, I just want to subscribe to the issues I care, which you can't do without having an account..

Levitating 2y ago

In his defense, some commenters had a pretty rude attitude. You cannot demand developers to implement a feature or call them out on being lazy. Nobody even offered to research how other players accomplish this. They just expect that because they believe it can be done someome should do the work for them. At least Remi was actually andering questions on the forums. This attitude towards open source maintainers is what's getting them all burned out.

KingMob 2y ago
As a FOSS maintainer, I have sympathy for him, but as a communicator, I see he really failed to address multiple commenters pointing out that several other FOSS video projects had the feature. (At least in the first page of comments.)
IshKebab 2y ago
I don't think the other people commenting were being at all rude. They asked nicely if a feature would be possible. He replied with a blank "No" and from then on it was pretty much "but other players can do it so it must be possible" and him rudely and incorrectly asserting that it isn't and that anyway if it was why don't they do it if they want it so much. The correct response would have been something like "it's more difficult to do and in some circumstances it will have very bad performance so we haven't done it yet". This is classic "It's hard and I can't be bothered so I'll make up some technical reason why it's impossible". Programmers do this all the time and it's kind of annoying. (And yes I understand video coding and I know why it's more difficult in some cases.)
- hobofan 2y ago
  I think the answer (read from between the lines) is more: "There is no way to make it work for the general case of all video formats, and we don't implement a feature unless it works for the general case, so we choose not to implement it at all. If that means that we don't have that feature for the file formats where it would works, that's a sacrifice that we are willing to take."
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Agreed, and this is actually a really good point: > we don't implement a feature unless it works for the general cas I used to make that mistake a lot. My boss would say "can we do this", for example report memory usage per operation. And I would say "no because sometimes memory is shared between operations so it would be meaningless". In other words I couldn't do it perfectly so I said we couldn't do it at all. That's what the VLC guy is doing and I didn't realise until I worked with that boss that it is COMPLETELY WRONG! Just because you can't do it perfectly doesn't mean giving up entirely is the best you can do. In cases like this you can absolutely do something that works sometimes but not in every case and that is way better for users than just giving up. Lots of programmers fall into that trap though.
    - Levitating 2y ago
      VLC is able to abstract over a ton of extremely complicated codecs by providing some common tools that work for all of them. I guess if VLC has a feature, you can always expect it to work. That's their design choice. There's nothing "COMPLETELY WRONG" about that.
      - spoaceman7777 2y ago
        The most entertaining part of this thread is that VLC is actually in the process of replacing its backend with the mpv-derived libplacebo. In the end, VLC has admitted defeat
        2y ago
brettermeier 2y ago
He really sounds like an asshole :D sorry for this stupid comment, but i had to tell.

The_Colonel 2y ago

The dev said they are happy to accept patch for this feature. Remember that you're not entitled to demand new features, as a (non-paying) user, you can't allocate dev's time to work on what you want.

imiric 2y ago
This card is played too often by developers who only want to work on features they personally find interesting or worthwhile. Yes, you realistically cannot implement everything every user wants, but at the same time your software is meant to solve problems. Keeping direct communication with your users, and understanding what they find useful or not, should be the driving force of the design and features of your app. FWIW, I've been on both sides of this discussion, as an OSS maintainer and user, and have experience with demanding users and arrogant and, yes, _lazy_ developers alike. Let's stop the narrative that users don't have the right to request features because they're not paying customers, and that this is driving developers to burn out. Communication is key to producing useful software regardless of its license. OSS development in particular is not just about throwing some code online and forgetting about it.
- mnsc 2y ago
  You have been a maintainer and yet you said "your software" instead of "the software you are maintaining". When you maintained an OSS project, did you accept pull requests from lots of contributors or was it a solo show? If so, did you get burned out?
- umbra07 2y ago
  A FOSS project can be FOSS and refuse all other contributions. FOSS does not make any requirements towards how the creator/main contributor handles and treats users, submitted patches, and feature requests. So no, FOSS users have zero inherent right to request anything - until the creator allows for it. I agree that taking that kind of "closed" approach is not helpful.
  - imiric 2y ago

thrdbndndn 2y ago

You need to send an email to the admin and ask for approval in order to register an account on VLC website to report bugs. This says it all.

fragmede 2y ago
It says it's a project on the Internet that has to deal with spam. Are you reading more into it than that?
usr1106 2y ago
That's the result of being successful for wide non-technical audience. The signal over noise would approach zero if everybody could create a bug report when something does not work as they wanted. Have you tried to create a meaningful bug report (not feature request) that has not been previously reported and were rejected? If so your complaint is valid. I haven't so I don't know.
- thrdbndndn 2y ago
  > The signal over noise would approach zero if everybody could create a bug report when something does not work as they wanted. I hear you, but it could be something not so extreme. Lots of even more popular projects work fine with bug reporting system on GitHub, which everyone has access to. > Have you tried to create a meaningful bug report (not feature request) that has not been previously reported and were rejected? No I don't, I just want to subscribe to the issues I care, which you can't do without having an account..