[LAD] new-session-management on jackaudio.org

[rosea.grammostola]

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Monday, April 5, 2021 11:25 AM, Fons Adriaensen <fons at linuxaudio.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 04, 2021 at 10:37:25PM +0000, rosea.grammostola wrote:
>
> > Somehow they need backup to get some authority apparently.
>
> Gotohttps://jackaudio.org and look around. Do you see NewSM there ?
> It's not even in the applications list (it probably should be).
>
> Also please try to understand the difference between
>
> 1.  https://new-session-manager.jackaudio.org and
> 2.  https://jackaudio.org/new-session-manager.
>
>     or for that matter
>
> 3.  http://kokkinizita.linuxaudio.org and
> 4.  http://linuxaudio.org/kokkinizita
>
>     and note that what we have is (1) in both cases, and (2) does
>     not exist.
>
>     That means e.g. that https://new-session-manager.jackaudio.org
>     not a part of the https://jackaudio.org site as it would be
>     for (2). They just share a host.
>
>
> > We're the official NSM.
>
> There is nothing onhttps://new-session-manager.jackaudio.org/ that
> says so. There is this:
>
> 'The goal is to become the de-facto standard music session manager
> for Linux distributions.'
>
> IMHO there's nothing wrong with that. Every author would be very happy
> to see his/her brain child become the de-facto standard.

That's exactly one of the problems. It's not their brainchild. NSM is the brainchild of the developer of Non-Session-Manager (NSM). newSM as you call it, is a copy of it.

That's why I raised the question, which version should be on jackaudio.org? The original or the fork? Fork A or fork B?

This leads to the next problematic situation, that the JACK maintainer is also the initiator and maintainer of the NSM fork. Guess which version he chooses now and in the future. There is a conflict of interest here... again... unfortunately.

I've two points against the fork, a ethical and a technical.

I don't like how the brainchild of the original author is totally hijacked by some people, hijacking linuxaudio.org for it in the same time to make this possible. Fons, I don't think I've to quote your responses to the way they forked and the names they gave it. You used even stronger words then I did, which says something. The end-result is that the Non author removed his source code (temporarily?) from the web in anger and despair.

It's also harsh that the original author had very good technical arguments to reject solutions to problems, which he thought they where the wrong analyses of the problems or the wrong solutions. He gave several options to implement solutions in a different way, which where in line with the ideas behind NSM instead. I agreed with him most of the time.

Harsh if the above points means that the fork gets a place on jackaudio.org, while the ethics of how this fork has been forked are far off and the technical implementations disputable.

These questionable ethics and disputable technical solutions would be much more arbitrary and not part of the discussion here if they would just stick with the NSM api (which they do, if I've to believe it, but that's questionable as well) and if they would put their fork on a own website.

Using linuxaudio.org or now jackaudio.org makes these matters far more problematic. Then it becomes a community issue and then there then it's more a matter of, who has the most power or the best connections in the community.

The situation with regards linuxaudio.org was more principal for me. I feel I've less to say about jackaudio.org, but here is my take on it:

Keep the NSM fork separated from jackaudio.org, (especially until all the ethical issues are solved). Avoid conflict of interest between the JACK maintainer and his NSM fork. Don't 'pollute' the JACK project with the ethics and discussion about the NSM fork. Don't make the JACK project (indirectly) responsible for it, in any way.

Put the NSM fork on it's own website or on the website of it's authors, kx.studio or laborejo.org.

Give a short explanation on the jackaudio.org website about session management, e.g. NSM and link to the original API and if you like to the forks API (but they where the same...) if you like.


Throwing another $0.02 in the box. Not much cents left... ;)