[MPlayer-users] Re: "MPlayer: The project from hell"

[Daniel A. Nagy]

Dear Mr. Barr,

Hereby, I would like to reflect to your article concerning this hellish
project, Mplayer.

First off, before you unleash your wrath to the creators of ANY open source
software, I'd like you to take two nuances into consideration:

1. You get what you pay for.
2. It's FREE.

These people work day and night to "scratch an itch" of themselves and many
others around the globe.

The developers of mplayer do not benefit anything from the popularity of
their project, therefore, it's not their primary concern. If you want to use
software that has been written primarily with popularity in mind, buy some
from Redmond, WA.

The goal of the developers is to make their movie player as good as they
can, and the only way they benefit from users are detailed, competent bug
reports, patches, and ideas for further development. Therefore, as you can
see, it's not the developers' concern to build a happy incompetent user
base. In the free software world, it's an established practice that
commercial vendors (such as distribution maintainers) care about the
non-expert users, because they actually do benefit from those, who are
willing to pay a few pennies and get a hassle-free product.

Mplayer's licensing, albeit not very clear on some details, obviously allows
for commercial distribution, and the popularity of the software indicates
that it would make any commercial distribution more popular and thus more
lucrative. At this point, a commercial distributor can help in two ways:

1. pay the mplayer developers to make it more (dumb-)user-friendly and ready
   to roll faster.

2. write the needed code and documentation themselves (as open-source
   licensing does not prohibit modifications as long as credit is given where
   it is due).

Some advanced users might find that they also have an "itch" to scratch, and
eventually add these features to mplayer.

As a native speaker of the English language, you, for example, could put all
your writer's talent into writing new documentation for Mplayer, instead of
writing venomous articles.

You don't like the installation procedure? The source is there: go fix it!

Have some ideas how to do it, but cannot do it yourself? There's a mailing
list for discussions.

Your attitude, however, that mplayer developers "owe" you anything, is
completely wrong, and doesn't help the case in any way. If you "expect"
something from mplayer, and it doesn't deliver, it's your problem,
especially if you don't read the documentation first.

What makes open-source software technically superior to closed-source
greedware, is exactly the fact, that it does not get nicely packaged until
all essential issues have been resolved. Because there's the authors are not
motivated to follow such a practice. Right now, there are much more
fundamental issues with mplayer than flaws in the installation procedure, so
don't expect core developers working on it. Some users, however, do work on
it already. Eventually, mplayer will get to the point when it is a
production-quality software, because that's how the open-source dynamics
works. Mplayer is probably a huge bleep on some distributors' radars,
already. I'm glad that mplayer developers write essential code rather than
documentation or install-scripts.

I'm not going to detail your technical remarks and won't comment too much on
your story, but it exemplifies a similar arrogant attitude that you are
criticizing, except that you didn't write a line of that code. I got mplayer
working in about 10 minutes. If you hit a big red warning sign that some
feature is experimental, then you nevertheless push it down your system's
throat and it bites back as a result, well, don't blame the authors...

Finally, I would like to tell you that I'm not happy either with some
arrogant flaming in mplayer docs and on the webpage, but I have far more
respect towards the developers than pointing it out. Especially, since I'm
well aware that it won't help making mplayer a better piece of free
software. I wrote only once to the developer list concerning flames, when it
got really ugly and seemed to take essential energies from development. In
that case, too, I proceeded with appropriate respect and politeness.

Sincerely,

-- 
Daniel A. Nagy, a grateful user of mplayer

PS: I am not affiliated with the mplayer project, except for being on the
mailing list (and willing to contribute). English is not my native language.

PS2: I don't think the popularity of mplayer will decrease, as there's no
comparable replacement for it.