...making Linux just a little more fun!
Benjamin A. Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
Mon, 4 Sep 2006 12:44:39 -0400
On Mon, Sep 04, 2006 at 02:19:37PM +0530, Kapil Hari Paranjape wrote:
> Hello, > > Some news. > > I suppose this was bound to happen sooner or later. Debian > maintainer's J. Jaspert and E. Bloch lost patience with J. Schilling > and have forked "cdrtools" to create cdrkit. Some details at > > http://debburn.alioth.debian.org/FORK > > (The forked tar.gz can be found in http://debburn.alioth.debian.org/). > Other reasons for the fork can be found on > http://bugs.debian.org/cdrecord and on the Linux Kernel mailing lists.
Good for them and everyone else, I say. I've been struggling with (and quietly cursing at) Joerg Schilling's DVD-writing software for a long time. On the one hand, it's the only DVD-writer that I could get to work on this strange DVD drive I have (Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-820S) - but it would only let me write at 1x due to nothing more than some strange conceit of the author's. As I recall from his explanation on a web page, he had decided that the Linux /dev implementation sucks, and until it was rewritten to be more like that of BSD, he wouldn't do anything to make 'cdrecord' work reasonably. Elsewhere, in every instance that I've seen him involved in a discussion about any technical issue, I was struck by his inflexibility ("bull-headedness" would be too strong of a term, since he is highly technically competent, but the stubborn refusal to even consider any viewpoint other than his own was... less than admirable.)
Now, according to the Debian bunch, he's exhibiting that same kind of intransigence and blind adherence in an area which is clearly not his strong point - licensing issues. [shrug] His right as the author, of course... but this is exactly the reason that forking is such a useful method. This is, in my opinion, as good as Open Source gets.
(BTW: has anyone else noticed that the largest, toughest, most dangerous
monster in QuakeII is called 'Jorg'? I'm just sayin'. 
))
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]
Tue, 5 Sep 2006 17:40:36 -0700
Quoting Benjamin A. Okopnik (ben at linuxgazette.net):
> Good for them and everyone else, I say. I've been struggling with (and
> quietly cursing at) Joerg Schilling's DVD-writing software for a long
> time. On the one hand, it's the only DVD-writer that I could get to work
> on this strange DVD drive I have (Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-820S) - but it
> would only let me write at 1x due to nothing more than some strange
> conceit of the author's. As I recall from his explanation on a web page,
> he had decided that the Linux /dev implementation sucks, and until it
> was rewritten to be more like that of BSD, he wouldn't do anything to
> make 'cdrecord' work reasonably. Elsewhere, in every instance that I've
> seen him involved in a discussion about any technical issue, I was
> struck by his inflexibility ("bull-headedness" would be too strong of a
> term, since he is highly technically competent, but the stubborn refusal
> to even consider any viewpoint other than his own was... less than
> admirable.)
That's our Jörg. Or perhaps I should say "Sun Microsystems's Jörg". (He seems to spend pretty much all his time these days working on OpenSolaris.)
Danny O'Brien blames Post-Traumatic SCSI Syndrome:
Jörg "Just trying to make an honest" Schilling took offence at SuSE's changes to his GPL cdrecord application, on the grounds that they'd patched it so much that it wasn't really Jörg Schilling's cdrecord at all, but more like some sort of awful Hollywood remake, like Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. To fix that, he stuck in a line which announced to SuSE users that their vendor was "known to ship bastardized and defective versions of cdrecord", then put in a comment above that SuSE wasn't allowed to change that line. You know, just in case they managed to bastardized the bastardization.
[...]
Now, we know that the furthermost pits of hell are reserved for those who break licensing agreements (unless its clickthrough, where you get put in purgatory until the law can be clarified). But we should also give pause before we place the epaullettes of satan on someone who, let's be fair, learnt the intricacies of the SCSI bus so that we do not.
Anyone who has played with SCSI knows that the interface is, frankly, Lovecraftian. A few terminators and DIP switches in, and you're constantly running saving throws for your sanity. Jörg's moment of alleged evil was fleeting, and he removed the restriction in the subsequent increment of cdrecord. Let's say that he was possessed by some old ide-scsi bug, and speaking in tongues at the time.
http://osdir.com/Article1607.phtml