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I've been a little surprised at some of the posts in this thread. As |
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some others have pointed out, I do not believe it is fair to state that |
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anyone is forcing you to use any particular software (such as |
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PulseAudio, or udev), as it is your choice to use Linux or not in the |
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first place. Why do these same people not complain about being "forced" |
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to use the Linux kernel? After all, it would certainly be tricky to |
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install Gentoo on metal, and not use the Linux kernel. |
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|
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As an open source developer and as an open source consumer (and of |
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course I consume far more open source efforts than I contribute), I |
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think it is important to keep in mind that we are benefiting from the |
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generosity of others. I think the idiom, "Don't look a gift horse in the |
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mouth" is probably appropriate to this discussion. |
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|
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Another important point that has been said by others that I think is |
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worth highlighting is that there are many ways to go without using |
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PulseAudio if you really want ALSA. Gnome happens to depend on it, but |
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that's the choice of Gnome developers and not us. |
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|
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I happen to work on an open source server product that requires the use |
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of MongoDB. There are many community users who complain about that, as |
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they would rather us use the DB of their preference (PostgreSQL is a |
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common request). I don't disagree that it would be cool if my project |
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could use either DB and let the users go with their own choice, but it's |
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not a priority for us due to the long list of other features and bugs |
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that we need to deal with. It's so much simpler for us to only support |
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one database, and so it allows us to deliver a lot of other cool |
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features instead. I think that is a reasonable decision on our part, and |
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some of our community members disagree and that's fine. I don't think we |
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or they feel any animosity about it. It would significantly increase our |
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QE and development costs if we were to support other DBs. I think Gnome |
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and PA can be thought of in a similar light. |
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|
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I will divulge that I happen to like Gnome and PulseAudio, and so |
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consider me biased. I did find the /usr thing with udev to be kind of |
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inconvenient since I did happen to have a separate /usr, but I dealt |
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with it and am grateful to have a free udev that I can use. |
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|
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Note that I'm not saying you need to like or use these technologies - I |
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just ask that you realize that there are pretty good reasons for Gnome |
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to simplify their dependency list, and that you do still have great |
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freedom in your software choices. There are many great alternatives to |
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Gnome. Open Source software is incredible, and I think it's exciting to |
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think about all the many choices it has brought us so far. Any one of us |
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could fork any OSS project we wanted at any time and tweak it for what |
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we want and share with the world. That is really good. |
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|
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-- |
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Randy Barlow |