Re: [LAU] [LAD] OpenOctaveMidi2 (OOM2) beta release

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 9:39 AM, alex stone wrote:
>> Deep in the basement of the OpenOctaveProject, the team have been
>> working hard, to bring OpenOctaveMidi into the modern age. From the
>> new interface, to the workflow features, OOM2 is the result of a great
>> deal of hard work, and thought. In our Project journey towards a great
>> Linux Audio pipeline, OOM2 represents the next important step.
>
> I think it would be a little more respectful if you notified this
> crowd precisely which *existing* codebase you "put a blowtorch to". i
> already know the answer, but i think it would better to hear it from
> you guys. altering the indentation and global search-and-replace of
> the project name does not constitute much of a blowtorch.
>

Hi Paul,

Let me shed some light from the opposite side.

I was one of the developers of the "existing codebase" [1]. Actually,
I joined the project formally about 3 months ago and I believe I made
a significant contribution in porting it to Qt4. The way I joined to
the project was traditional: sent a couple useful patches so that
people can get to know me, and after a couple rounds I got commit
rights. From my experience with open source projects, this is the way
things evolve. (I sent patches to ardour too in the past, you folks
have been friendly all the time. I am pretty sure same thing would
have happened if I contributed more frequently.)

OOM folks took a different approach. Originally, we granted them an
SVN branch and we were working under the same umbrella. They put
really hard work in their branch, and I admired most of what they did.
The plan was to merge their new features into the trunk. So we asked
for patches for individual features. This never came from them.
Instead they wanted us to grab everything (or a subset) as is. Our
team did not have the resources to take the diff of each individual
file to filter out each separate feature, and we simply didn't want to
accept *everything* as is. Thus, we proposed them to fork. This is
purely due to differences in the workflow and creativity.

That said, I believe the original codebase deserved a little more
credit than what is there in the bottom corner of the AUTHORS file.
Moreover, when they forked off, they _kindly_ asked us to not backport
some of the changes they made (mostly appearance related). While I do
not have any intention of using their look, I found this a little odd.
You are borrowing tens of thousands of lines of code from a project,
don't give them credit in your project webpage, and tell them not to
use your little contribution in their original codebase. There is
something morally wrong here.

Anyhow, I wish them good luck with their project.

Best,
Orcan

[1] http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2010-December/075007.html
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Received on Fri Jan 28 00:15:01 2011