Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 16:18:07 -0500 From: Christopher Masto <chris@netmonger.net> To: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com> Cc: multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 4.2R pcm/sbc AWE records noise, not audio: 16 bit bug?; gus broken? Message-ID: <20010202161806.F92405@netmonger.net> In-Reply-To: <80325.981145343@winston.osd.bsdi.com>; from jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com on Fri, Feb 02, 2001 at 12:22:23PM -0800 References: <gandalf@vilnya.demon.co.uk> <80325.981145343@winston.osd.bsdi.com>
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On Fri, Feb 02, 2001 at 12:22:23PM -0800, Jordan Hubbard wrote: > Let it also be said that anyone who dismisses any part of FreeBSD as > "sad" (or uses words to the same effect) needs to also express such > sentiments as part of a proposed fix, e.g. "the foobar code in FreeBSD > is really sad, the attached diff contains my proposed fix" or they're > not helping things at all. There is a difference between an unsolicited post along the lines of: "Dear freebsd-multimedia, I hate the sound drivers in FreeBSD. They totally suck. Whoever wrote them is obviously a retard." and answering a question (hypothetically less rude version): ">> I get static whenever I try to record something. > Yes, it appears that's been the case for several months at least. It stopped working for me over a year ago. Based on the amount of time this problem has been around, plus the fact that sound is also broken in different ways for other cards I have (and has been for several reases), plus the general traffic I've seen on freebsd-multimedia concerning sound problems, I doubt that it will ever be fixed. It's inevitable that eventually older hardware support will go away as things are rewritten, but it always makes me sad to lose the use of something that was perfectly fine yesterday." As I already said, I was rude and I was wrong for being rude. I think Cameron took it a lot better than most of the people who are jumping on me for my mistake. In any case, I am now more aware of the current situation, that the issue which caused this whole mess has probably been fixed already, and I have the names of some better-supported cards if all else fails. > To slam something without proposing a constructive solution in a > volunteer project like FreeBSD (or any volunteer project) is totally > counter-productive since it only serves to demotivate people from > fixing it. Slamming it as a part of your argument for why your much > better version should be used instead, on the other hand, is another > matter. I'm not a complete jerk. I've contributed patches, testing, and other resources in the past, and will continue to do so. Like everyone else, I have limited resources when it comes to a hobby, which is what FreeBSD is for me. Fixing things, in any form, is one of my favorite activities, but I know that with the time I have available and the amount I'd have to learn about sound cards before even starting, it's not currently an option for me. And until SMPng settles down, I'm not even prepared to test the latest fixes. So the right thing for me to do is probably just shut up. FreeBSD (and other projects) have this long tradition of "put up patches or shut up". There were recently some interesting comments about this in the tcpdump/vendor branch discussion. I'd like to make the point that in a volunteer project the size of FreeBSD, where it is physically impossible for one person to do all the work, it is a given that some problems must be fixed by a different person than the one who reports them. If the only way to get a bug fixed was to fix it yourself, there would be no FreeBSD. Reporting bugs must be understood as a contribution to the project, even when said bug reports do not contain patches. And with that, I'll go back to doing my invisible, unappreciated and somewhat cryptic part for FreeBSD advocacy. -- Christopher Masto Senior Network Monkey NetMonger Communications chris@netmonger.net info@netmonger.net http://www.netmonger.net Free yourself, free your machine, free the daemon -- http://www.freebsd.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-multimedia" in the body of the message
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