7 ms·
It's unlikely that there will be any further releases of mt32-pi
- brianbest101 2y agoCompletely understandable. Sucks to see this keep happening to OS devs
- nemomarx 2y agoThat sounds pretty dark. What's this vogon forum? ironic name
- aidenn0 2y agoI think it stands for "Very Old Games On New Systems"
- maximilianburke 2y agoThe sad irony of members of a forum named as such harassing someone who is indeed building a very old MIDI synthesizer for new hardware.
- smitelli 2y agoIt's vogons dot org; it's a pretty wide range of folks with varied interest in obsolete hardware. Some of the louder voices there are absolutely insufferable. There is genuine knowledge in the forum pages though, and if you're doing stuff for DOS/real-mode x86 there's a good chance you'll find yourself there.
- munchler 2y agoI did a quick search for references to mt32-pi on that forum and found nothing unpleasant. Maybe I'm missing something. https://www.vogons.org/search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=mt32-pi https://www.vogons.org/search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&ke...
- arvigeus 2y agoSpeculation: maybe abusive comments were later removed by mods?
- sleepybrett 2y agohttps://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=1256822&hilit=mt32%20mt32pi%20mt32-pi%20pi%20clout#p1256822 https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=1256822&hilit=mt32%20... looks spicy but almost a year old, maybe the guy continued to harass.
- csnover 2y agoForum admin here. No posts were reported or removed and the author hasn’t posted since last April. I don’t know what’s going on here and have reached out to them to try to understand and assist. The community standards explicitly prohibit off-site harassment but unless someone tells us, there’s nothing I can do about it.
- pino82 2y agoAt least they are something that actually exists on their own, and not just a Microsoft cloud entity. I've seen rough people everywhere on the internet, but that's at least very delighting.
- tdeck 2y ago> Some of the louder voices there are absolutely insufferable. This sounds like one of those situations where if you just warned and then banned certain people, the community would be much better off.
- csnover 2y agoThis is exactly what happens on VOGONS, but it relies on the community reporting violations, and I suspect this isn’t happening consistently. I’ve reviewed too many reports where multiple people had been breaking the rules for days before anyone bothered to flag a single post. I don’t know what to do about how toxicity has become so normalised in online spaces that people don’t even bother to flag it. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to tell new members that VOGONS is not Reddit or Twitter and to not import antisocial behaviour from those places into this place. It is like fighting a losing battle with an invasive species. Frankly, I also don’t know how to strike the right balance when it comes to long-time members who break the rules infrequently but consistently. Knowing that a forum regular is probably going to break the rules again in the future, but not for several months, doesn’t make for an obvious solution to me. So I try to do the best I can to remind people to do better, and hope the time-until-relapse goes up. But I am sure this negatively impacts other community members since they will see the same person doing the same thing again and wonder why nothing is being done about them, not noticing that the last incident was three or six or twelve months ago.
- zimpenfish 2y ago> Frankly, I also don’t know how to strike the right balance when it comes to long-time members who break the rules infrequently but consistently. Suspend them for a month the first time, ban them outright the second. Sounds like they're not interested in listening to reason. Also pour encourager les autres, etc.
- csnover 2y agoThree-strikes-style rules like this make for easy decision-making, but they don’t make for good decision-making. They eliminate curiosity about the root problem, reject the reality of how humans learn (it is almost never linear), and usually end up backfiring catastrophically at some point. Compliance by fear does not make for open and healthy communities. The fundamental attribution error makes us believe the problem must be that this kind of person is “not interested in listening to reason”, but I can tell you that the ones who aren’t interested in listening make that abundantly clear when you ask them to stop. They are not the ones I struggle with. The problem cases are those who act in good faith but have trouble regulating their emotions, infrequently enough to not be an obvious menace, but consistently enough that I recognise their names.
- gunalx 2y agoSo sad when people feel pressured and harrased out of the fun in doing open designs. Looked like a really cool project .
- amstan 2y agoI did find the community around those projects (MisterFPGA) to be rather weird, so I understand a little where he's coming from.
- ranger_danger 2y agoIn my experience, their description sounds exactly like the greater emulation and retrogaming scene in general.
- dktbs 2y agoI've found the MiSTer community to generally be pretty helpful, but there are definitely exceptions. The fact that its a project that aims to perfectly match the behavior of the original hardware leads to some strange arguments.
- bhouston 2y agoOne thing to watch out for is generalized depression. It can make it seem that all projects are not worth investing in. It may seem to be related to this project but it may be a wider issue for the individual.
- azinman2 2y ago“ I have endured a sustained campaign of abuse from members of the VOGONS forum, been labelled a "clout-chaser", had threats sent to my personal email address, code been used in other projects without proper accreditation, my 3D print designs stolen and sold by faceless eBay/Etsy sellers, personal attacks made towards me when people don't get their feature request... the list goes on and on.” I mean, perhaps they have depression, but this is pretty awful. It’d make me want to quit.
- yapyap 2y agodid you read the text linked?
- bhouston 2y agoI did. I am not going to harp on this because it is unfair to the individual who is the topic of this post.
- heavyset_go 2y agoSometimes responses like the OP's are the natural, healthy and expected reactions to reality. It's insanely stressful and discouraging to be harassed, threatened, pseudo-stalked and have your work stolen for profit. Often the healthiest thing to do is to walk away from toxic situations and invest your time, attention and pursuits elsewhere. That said, circumstances like these can certainly cause lasting depression. I just don't perceive the OP's behavior stemming from depression, it seems like a perfectly logical and healthy reaction in response to a shitty situation.
- altitudinous 2y agoNO. I work on very public software, I receive pretty terrible criticism in reviews and email. Generally a vocal minority of people are unkind scammers and want it all for free and let me know. Blaming the recipient of the emails (victim blaming) or saying the individual may be suffering from wider issues is not on. It is irrelevant, it is their private life. At issue are the scum who scam.
- xbar 2y agoThanks for your effort.
- philomath_mn 2y ago[flagged]
- MattGaiser 2y agoPeople can become wildly entitled of volunteers and they absolutely will act as though they are your manager or they are a paying customer.
- pino82 2y ago[flagged]
- heavyset_go 2y agoThe thing about abuse is that, yes, you can ignore it. But it doesn't go away. It often gets worse. And part of the human condition is that you're a person with a brain that can handle only so much abuse before you start unraveling mentally, emotionally, physically, etc. Yes, in general, it's a good thing to try to ignore random assholes. But when those assholes are in multitudes, they make you their focus and their harassment doesn't stop, ignoring it just makes the problem worse for yourself. Just making this comment because I once believed the whole "just ignore it" thing myself. I had a relatively rough life and it takes a lot to really bother me, so I could "ignore" it and did. Eventually it gets to you, and when it does, you won't be in a place where ignoring it works anymore. The lesson I learned was to walk away from toxic situations early. You don't get brownie points for sticking it out in shitty situations, what you do get is deteriorating health.
- pino82 2y ago[flagged]
- BoxFour 2y agoOnline harassment can quickly escalate beyond the point of being ignorable, even for the most resilient individuals. Swatting is the classic extreme case of that. Even foregoing those extreme examples, there are plenty of other impossible-to-ignore ways for people to harass you (prank pizza orders, for example). Ignoring some people will cause them to escalate the extent to which they will try to get your attention.
- yapyap 2y agowow, sad
- pino82 2y ago[flagged]
- altairprime 2y agoI know nothing about any of this, but it makes me angry – not sad – that yet another creator of something good and worthwhile, has been burnt by demands and infighting until they walk away in disgust. Good for you, dwinham.
- outside1234 2y agoWhat is wrong with people? Who is such a loser that they send abusive things like this to a maintainer's email address?
- heavyset_go 2y agoI'm just an observer, but from the outside, it seems like the emulation scene really, really likes to drive creators to drink or worse. It takes a considerable amount of time, skill and engineering to create great emulators, and yet people still find reasons to complain or even harass developers of the projects they themselves are using. It's just bizarre. I've seen some of it as a maintainer of some open source projects, but it's never escalated to harassment or what the OP describes. I really cannot relate to anyone that treats others like that.
- OkayPhysicist 2y agoMy theory (as someone who's worked on a variety of open source projects, in various scenes) is that "moderately technical user" is the most problematic group to offer open source projects too. The heavily technical, software for software devs, side of things generally has you interfacing with people who have some experience with open source development, and the worst you'll run into are people who are aggressively trying to "help". On the opposite extreme, you've got stuff like VLC player, where a large chunk of the userbase aren't technically inclined enough to hunt down your feedback mechanisms. The "power user" demographic simultaneously lacks the experience with OSS development to sympathize, and possesses the motivation/ability to hunt you down to reach out to you. Even worse if you end up stumbling into the realm of technically inclined children (Minecraft modding can only be done by completely blocking any form of player feedback).
- lelandfe 2y agoA friend at a previous company revealed after years of working together that he was the primary developer on a popular console emulator. He uses an alias and keeps it all quite secret because the level of harassment that alias endures is horrible. The idea of spending hours every day for years straight on something you have to keep secret from almost everyone just... really sucks.
- nullc 2y agoThe social media-izing of open source has been a massive blow. Projects and contributors across the board are randomly bombarded with mob harassment. Return to Cathedral.
- jakelazaroff 2y ago> Return to Cathedral. What does this mean?
- immibis 2y agoA closed-off development team releases what they want, and you take it or leave it, like sqlite.
- maztaim 2y agoFWIW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
- jballanc 2y agoIt's a reference to Eric S. Raymond's famous article "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", where he compares the rather top-down, leader driven culture of Unix development to the free-for-all style of Linux. Of course, I always like to point out the foolishness of this metaphor: Bazaars in the Near East were usually run in a fairly regimented fashion by merchant guilds and their elected or appointed leaders.
- aidenn0 2y ago> ...where he compares the rather top-down, leader driven culture of Unix development to the free-for-all style of Linux. The Cathedral example was actually GNU, which is Not Unix (it's in the name!).
- jballanc 2y agoShoot, you're absolutely right! It's been a long while since I last re-read the article, and I had forgotten how "targeted" (for lack of a better term) it was at certain specific individuals.
- damion6 2y agoWhat stands out is the abuse this person suffered. I know that's real and have seen it.
- Sabinus 2y agoDo you have any indication of why this person was the target of abuse?
- stego-tech 2y agoCan’t speak to them specifically, but generally anyone of particular note or import is going to be targeted by those who feel sleighted. It’s why Celebrities get stalkers, why Influencers get “taken down” in hate videos, and why small project contributors eventually throw up their hands and say “fuck this” after having enough toxicity from the very groups they’re trying to serve or help. Some people just cannot stand being a “lesser-than” in their own minds, and will rip apart others. It’s always been there, but the social media and data harvesting era of today has made it easier than ever to terrorize someone you just plain dislike. I hate that they’ve been pushed to ending the project so abruptly, but I hope they find joy again soon.
- tdeck 2y agoI think this is very subculture dependent. Celebrity culture? Sure. Gamer culture? Absolutely. But I feel like there are many subcultures that are much less prone to harassment of prominent community members. There is also I think a distinction between people whose toxic behavior comes from their miscalibrates sense of entitlement and people whose toxicity comes from their desire to bully someone. Having done a lot of volunteer work, I know firsthand that many people simply don't realize how much effort goes into something that seems simple. They will make suggestions and sometimes demands, pressing the value and importance of what they're asking. But they don't step up to help. This doesn't rise to the level of bullying and harassment, but it can be extremely frustrating, draining, and discouraging.
- 2y ago
- crtified 2y agomt32-pi has been, and will continue to be, a source of great joy for many retro PC enthusiasts. For those of us with a particular interest in DOS music, it is huge. Some modern projects generously give enthusiasts access to the power and functionality of (what might otherwise be $1000+ in) rare retro hardware, and in this hobby, mt32-pi ranks high among them.
- nsxwolf 2y agoI really want one of the hats for the Radpberry Pi but it doesn’t look easy to source. I don’t see any boards for sale and I’ve never tried to use PCBWay.
- codetrotter 2y agoAt least two of the hats https://github.com/dwhinham/mt32-pi/wiki/I%C2%B2S-DACs https://github.com/dwhinham/mt32-pi/wiki/I%C2%B2S-DACs look like they are currently for sale. And I didn’t check all of them.
- nsxwolf 2y agoMost of these appear to just be DACs. I want one with DIN in and out, a screen and some controls. The couple I can find seem to be gerbers and BOMs only.
- codetrotter 2y agoThe second one on the list, the Pisound, has two DIN ports (one in, one out) and looks like something that you can buy. https://blokas.io/pisound/ https://blokas.io/pisound/ > Pisound is an ultra-low latency high-quality sound card and MIDI interface specially designed for Raspberry Pi pocket computers. > Equipped with 192kHz 24-bit Stereo Input and Output driven by the legendary Burr-Brown chips, DIN-5 MIDI Input and Output ports, user-customizable button and bundled software tools, this little Raspberry Pi HAT will bring your audio projects to a whole new level! And seems to be pretty much ready to go as soon as you get it: > Setup is Eaaasy! > Pisound mounts directly onto Raspberry Pi, no additional power adapter or soldering is required.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- CursedSilicon 2y agoI have to second the remarks about abuse from the Vogons community. There are members of that forum that are a blight on the retro computing landscape quite frankly. The abuse that I've seen them level at others for simply enjoying themselves is staggering. When I debuted my own first major retro project, "Building the REAL Ultimate Windows 98 PC" [1] I went to absolute lengths to prove my research was done with such absurd meticulousness simply out of fear that I'd be targeted by Vogons and bullied into oblivion for it. I spent two years and thousands of dollars buying old hardware just to ensure every little detail was as perfect as I could make it. Other much larger youtubers such as PhilsComputerLab received so much abuse over the years they straight up left the site entirely. Another friend of mine was also recently harassed by a user on that site, snarkily editing all his posts with ".Deleted because it was useful but ignored." after giving useless commentary [2] Vogons is a blight. The files hosted on it should be moved to the Internet Archive and the website allowed to sink into linkrot oblivion. There's very little useful information on it to begin with, just a bunch of angry old men smugly jerking each other off about "period correct" 90's computer builds [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YETxI4rA_gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YETxI4rA_gs [2] https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=95770 https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=95770