Robin Gareus wrote:
> I think it is entirely appropriate when high profile members of the
> linuxaudio consortium announce a standard and use linuxaudio.org to
> promote it.
I disagree strongly.
Such a move should at least be approved by the linuxaudio.org
management board. If not, it amounts to using the consortium's
name without any authority to do so. It doesn't matter how 'high
profile' the persons involved are. No organistaion that takes
itself seriously would allow that.
> The alternative would have been to start a new organization (like
> LV2 jackaudio, FAUST etc).
Indeed, and that would be put that organization on a level playing
field, as it should be.
> Yet this would likely fragment the community further, which isn't
> in the interest of linuxaudio.org.
I don't want to be offensive, but that is the sort of argumentation
used by the likes of Putin and Erdogan to justify themselves.
Fragmentation and diversity of opinion are essential features of
any community that is not run in an authoritarian way.
Ciao,
--
FA
Hello,
New-Session-Manager maintainer here. I am not a member of the consortium so I have waited to register and speak here.
It was requested, by a consortium member, that I quickly give a statement, which I happily will.
"Linuxaudio.org presents" will not be used in the release announcement anymore. I already agreed to that before these current ML conversations.
Everything else has been already said by the consortium members and I don't see any value to repeat here what I already publically wrote in other places. I will of course answer and write something again, if any consortium member has further questions.
Greetings,
Nils
It was asked that this discussion was moved to this list since it is meta
to the LAD list itself. I will attempt to comply though this list has been
inactive for nearly 3 years.
The recent unfortunate situation highlighted by Jonathon Liles' lengthy
rant in [LAD] regarding his Non-Session-Manager software and the fork
called New-Session-Manager does raise some questions.
Johnathon has a history of being difficult to work with, caustic in his
writing, and I can understand the motives to fork, especially considering
the lengthy time since any previous NSM release. I don't think the fork is
the issue nor particularly germane to the discussion. I imagine the
situation would have been avoided with some more cooperative effort from
Johnathon, but I also won't criticize him too harshly for having a vision
for his project and rejecting requests that didn't fit in that vision.
While I do not subscribe to Johnathon's assignment of malice and subterfuge
it does seem that the list moderators releasing a fork under the
linuxaudio.org brand is probably overreaching the consortium's mission: "to
promote and enable the use of Linux kernel based systems for professional
audio use."
I believe that releasing the software under the names of the authors'
rather than under the would have helped make this situation look less like
an attempt of the organization to replace a developers project without
acknowledgement of his contributions. I'd like to politely request the
authors of the New Session Manager refrain in the future from releasing
software as official linuxaudio.org versions. It seems appropriate to me
that this be written into the policies of the consortium to avoid future
instances where developers may feel their software is being replaced by the
organization itself.
I am assuming the consortium would like to remain project agnostic rather
than picking the winners and losers of which projects get the LA.org
blessing.
_spencer
I second this request from Spencer Jackson.
No other software is released by linuxaudio.org since it's existence. It looks like the developers of the fork are using linuxaudio.org to promote their fork above the original version of a fellow LAD developer, to help them gain control over the session API and to make sure their version of the software will be included in distributions instead of the original. The fellow LAD developer and a part of his community doesn't agree with the fork. But that's not the question here. It's the fact that the developers of the fork, make it look like the fork is officially 'released' by linuxaudio.org. The developers of the fork are using their roles at linuxaudio.org to promote their fork. I think this could be seen as a misuse of linuxaudio.org consortium for their own goals and the goals of their fork. It hurts the work of a fellow LAD developer. This is not wherefore the linuxaudio.org consortium exists. This conflict of interest should be avoided.
The Linuxaudio.org consortium should be a organization which promotes linuxaudio in general, but should never choose one version of a application above a other version by a different developer. It should stay neutral in this. It's easy to fix this with a rule which states that linuxaudio.org doesn't release software itself and doesn't host software.
It looks the linuxaudio.org consortium isn't that active anymore, which could also be a reason why these developers of the fork can freely release their software as a official linuxaudio.org version. Nobody prevents them from doing so. Therefor I think the developers of the fork should be avoid this conflict of interest themselves and show some maturity and wisdom, to stop releasing their fork as it where a official linuxaudio.org version. These developers have their own websites for their software applications and they do have the skills to organize a way to work on shared code on any github repository. It's easy for anyone these days to register a own repository on github, gitlab or a similar service. There is no practical need to host the fork on the github page of linuxaudio.org.
At the end this is not about this particular forked software suite, not about the right to fork in general. This about keeping the linuxaudio.org neutral where it should be and to avoid that members/ moderators of the linuxaudio.org consortium use the consortium for their personal projects and goals. The linuxaudio.org consortium should project LAD developers, and certainly not become a competitor of them.
All though it's not about the specific software suite (Non Session Manager) and this is not about forking. I challenge those people who find it hard to divide between the two, to take a other software project in their mind and to do a thought experiment with it. How would it be if the linuxaudio.org consortium would officially release a fork of your software you worked on for more the 15 years or your favorite software application or your favorite developer, while that developer and/ or you as a user doesn't agree with it?
New-Ardour, New-Qstuff, New-Qtractor, New-Aeolus .... now officially released by linuxaudio.org!
While the original LAD developer doesn't agree with this? That's in all cases unthinkable right?
