Re: prominent message on website about "use only on

My two cents, in the same ranty vein as Thomas's post to which I'm replying:

I always thought of CVS as incredibly easy to use, Subversion as the 
next-level but somewhat cryptic alternative for those who have outgrown CVS, 
and Git as somewhere in between but having the very well-executed "social" and 
fork-encouraging aspect of GitHub which, for now, makes it relatively easy for 
many more people to contribute.

The exposure to so many more (dare I say) *young*, enthusiastic developers by 
having the project on GitHub could be the shot in the arm this project needs. 
We'd get more eyeballs on the code, more consideration of what needs 
improvement, more contributors, more forks, more interest, more people who 
have time to hack on it, more people who aren't put off by CVS and 
SourceForge.

I'm skeptical of the notion that after cleanup, only dutiful maintenance is 
needed. Well, it's not so much that more ambitious work is *needed*, but that 
it may be the case that this minimal view of development priorities is really 
the only thing that can be imagined by someone who has no time or inclination 
to work on much of anything, or who is dependent on leadership and gatekeeping 
by such people. It's like Eeyore asking Marvin the Android what we should do 
next. How about we let someone else decide?

> how much is there to play around and get exited about?

You mentioned intensity stereo coding. That's part of a raft of low-bitrate 
tuning that's long overdue. And there are always going to be problem samples 
to tackle.

Maybe there are things that we haven't even thought of, and can't even begin 
to think of, because none of us have any time or interest, or because we find 
various aspects of the codebase and its maintenance to be daunting obstacles.

> Is there big new functionality expected?

If you are asking the current gatekeepers, obviously the answer is no, and it 
seems not even bug fixes are expected in any real capacity.

But there may be things not yet considered. All it would take to find out is a 
switch to GitHub and an announcement of "handing over the keys" in our 
favorite nerdy forums & news sites to change that. Then the "community" can 
decide what the priorities are. However this will only do so much good if 
everything must still get through the obstacle of original devs who are 
unresponsive, uninterested, and have no time anymore.

> In the end there will be about one person doing the job, and it's of
> course fine that this person eventually migrates the tools to what
> suits them. Who does the work does the calls.

Yeah but the problem is they are uninterested in doing more than whatever
they have time for, which is next-to-nothing.

In other words, I think it is well past time for a change not just of source 
control systems, but also of leadership. They will go hand in hand. There are 
surely people out there, maybe on this list, with way more energy and 
initiative who can steward the official codebase. Where are they? Right now, 
they are on GitHub. Git and GitHub are imperfect but that's just where you 
have to go to find the people who can really help this project get out of its 
doldrums.

If the sentiment among the original developers is that the project really is 
"done" then it should not be any problem to wash their hands of it.

Or, if there are big plans, everyone needs to take a good look at what the 
situation has been for the last 5+ years. Nobody is doing much of anything. 
They can say it is stagnation in the name of stability, mission accomplished 
or whatever, but the fact remains that jokes were made several years ago about 
the next bugfix release not coming before 2020, and now it seems like less and 
less of a joke. If now is not the time to hand over the reins, when is? 2020? 
2025?

To me it feels like the project is a 90% completed puzzle on a table in a 
hoarder's house, and they are insisting "I have big plans for this; I am going 
to finish it someday!"... when the reality is that the table is in a room made 
inaccessible by the detritus of all the other projects they have big plans 
for, and the table is buried under a pile of food wrappers, old magazines, and 
spilled kitty litter, in a building with a leaky roof. We are fools for 
waiting around for years and years for the owner to put some more pieces in.

(All that said, I am not volunteering for anything, haha.)

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