Hi LAD,

I would like to raise a issue I've with what I think is a misuse of the consortium linuxaudio.org.

As most of you know, the non-session-manager is forked a few months ago. This was not a fork in harmony with it's original developer and a part of the community, who worked on this project for more then 10 years and helped create a unique session environment where many users benefit from until today.

Again? Get over it I hear you say. The license gives them the freedom to fork!

I agree.

But I've personally serious issues with how this is organized and presented and one thing goes beyond my personal views I think.

Let's start with my personal view with saying that I don't like how they tried to replace non-session-manager by new-session-manager completely, in a for me 'Orwellian way'. This starts with the naming:

Overall name: non-session-manager -> new-session-manager (new?)

User interface: non-session-manager -> legacy-gui (legacy?)

Ok, now I hear you say: they're free to choose whatever name they want, even if it's bad taste (which is subjective anyway) or if you think it has a 'Orwellian smell'. Moreover, you did issue this already some time ago.

I agree.

But where it goes really wrong I think, is the way how the name of 'linuxaudio.org' is used in the same deceptive manner. They present the very questionable and debatable fork as if it was released by linuxaudio.org.

They release their fork with statements like:

"Linuxaudio.org presents: New Session Manager Version x"

"Released under the Linuxaudio umbrella"

But since when does linuxaudio.org as consortium releases software? Or since when chooses linuxaudio.org as a consortium for a certain version of software? Since when does linuxaudio.org fork software from it's own LAD developers?

I think linuxaudio.org has always been neutral about this and it never was a task for the linuxaudio.org consortium to release software or worse, to fork software from community developers and presents it as the 'new' and 'replacement' even while the original developer and a part of the community disagrees. It probably never crossed someones mind to do it this way.

What has happened here, is in my view, a misuse of the name linuxaudio.org and people have misused their role as moderator and maintainer of linuxaudio.org and it's github page, to promote their own forked software version of a other LAD developer.

Linuxaudio.org should stay neutral here and it should be considered 'unwanted', 'unhealthy' and 'not allowed' for people to use the name linuxaudio.org and maybe even the software structure of the consortium to promote a fork of someone else his work (without consent by the original LAD developer).

The main developer of new-session-manager has his own place (laborejo.org) where he can puts his software and so also his fork. That's not the problem. But even if you place it on the linuxaudio github page for some reason, it's utterly wrong in my option, to present this fork as if it was released by the linuxaudio.org consortium.

Regards,

\r