Is anybody here?

[HaaRviK]

Does anyone, especially the developers, actually read and respond to these posts? I've submitted several myself and only had one responded to. I've even sent the development team an email about hiring them with no response. What gives guys? What's the real deal here? Is this a corporate project that releases minimal product so the general public can do their beta testing for them or what? I see plenty of posts with no responses to them, and when I do it is usually a "don't use windows" response. Well, I can tell you from my own experiences, the windows version is about the only platform that actually works out of the box. No wonder there are so many windows posts.

[The DJ]

The problem is that only developers answer questions. Have you seen the amount of questions???????
We are a small group of about 20 (mostly) students who work on VideoLAN in our free time. We are glad when we have some spare time to code. We are even more happy when we have the time to document our code. We are insanely happy when we have a couple of minutes a week to visit the forums.

We do read most of it i think. We just don't answer stupid question (which are about 50% of the questions), and don't answer questions we don't konw.

Dude it's opensource........ no garantees, no warrenties, if you don't like it , then that's your problem.


PS. about hiring. same problem i guess. No time. It better be REALLY interesting to work on, and pay VERY well.

PPS Don't use windows. It sucks !!!!!

PPPS We don't deliver a linux version that works 'out of the box' When you are expecting that, then you miss the whole point of VLC. modularity, configurability. And then there is Mac OS X, by definition better than the windows version.

PPPPS He, but at least you got our attention by being rude !!!!!!!!

[HaaRviK]

I wasn't trying to be rude, I was trying to get someones attention. I understand it being open source. And yes I have seen the stupid posts as well. But by the same token, I have seen legitimate posts go unanswered. I have 2 of them posted myself. As I read through the posts, I answer questions I can. I know what it feels like to have a post up for days with no response. Maybe if others did the same people wouldn't get so frustrated.

As for the Linux out of the box, if I download a binary for my distribution, I DO expect it to work out of the box. That's the point of having a binary. As an example, I downloaded a version for RedHat, and it installed just fine. 2 weeks later I download it again, only this time it complains about missing libraries. Same install, same hardware. I would say that is an issue.

Then there's the whole thing of it installing just fine, but doesn't work. No errors, just doesn't do anything. Additionally, if the program is gonna require other programs to work, don't you think it would be a good idea to list those programs? That would eliminate 50% of the stupid questions and hairpulling people are going through. Nothing worse that getting a "libxxx is missing" and not knowing what to install to satisfy that dependancy.

I have used vlc for over 2 years now, and it seems with each new version come all new errors, but the documentation doesn't really change. I have yet to see a list of "Here is what needs to be installed for this program to work correctly" list. Do that and I think you'll see a lot of the support questions go away.

I wouldn't mind documenting my experiences so that others can benefit from what I have found works. Problem is, I can't get two installs to work the same. I can install on two identical machines, and get different errors on each one. And I have yet to get a pvr card working with it in Linux...windows works just fine.

Don't get me wrong this is a great product, when it works. The lack of knowledge for the requirements is what makes it so difficult to work with.

[Murray]

As for the Linux out of the box, if I download a binary for my distribution, I DO expect it to work out of the box. That's the point of having a binary.

Totally agree.

The Debian version actually works out of the box. You may apt-get install wxvlc and you're done, vlc will work fine.

RedHat versions do normally work out of the box as well. When there's issues about that, the most effective way to inform the team is to write to vlc-devel@videolan.org. We actually consider this forum as a less effective tool than plain, traditional mailing lists. The forum has been installed for users that feel less at ease with mailing lists and most of all, in the hope that users themselves would have answered to other users' posts.

It would be probably a good idea to have a web page with direct reference to distribution maintainers for packaging-related problems.

Nothing worse that getting a "libxxx is missing" and not knowing what to install to satisfy that dependancy.

That is something that your package manager should be able to do. If dpkg accepts to install something on my Debian box, I can feel pretty sure that it won't miss any dependencies.

I have used vlc for over 2 years now, and it seems with each new version come all new errors, but the documentation doesn't really change. I have yet to see a list of "Here is what needs to be installed for this program to work correctly" list. Do that and I think you'll see a lot of the support questions go away.

Very true. Sad but true. As in most open source projects, we're more in need of people to write docs and guidelines than people to code (well, coders are always welcome, please don't misunderstand my sentence :)

I wouldn't mind documenting my experiences so that others can benefit from what I have found works.

Please, do.

If it's just for rapid hacks to make things work, feel free to contribute to wiki.videolan.org. If you think you have got time for a more thorough and structured work on documentation, contact us by mail and contribute to the FAQ or the HOWTO.

Thanks in advance,

--
Carlo

[HaaRviK]

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, I can't document it because by the time I do get it working, I have installed so much crap trying to resolve the error, that I don't know which program got the file installed for me. I agree that whoever makes the binary should have a page or at leaset include the pertinent information as to what was used to build the binary. Case in point:

After much frustration trying to get a RH9 version working, I wiped my drive and did a new install. I installed EVERYTHING on all 3 CD's. Didn't miss one single rpm. But when I try to install vlc from the binaries, low and behold there are the same freakin errors I've been getting the last 3 days. libxxx required. No note on the download page as to where these libs come from or where to get them...nothing.

So now I have to go back to my old 0.7.0 Bond version because it actually installs. So there is apparently something on the developers box that has linked itself to the other libraries and now wants them.

Consistancy....that's all we ask for. Open source or not, having the neccessary files/documentation goes a long way. Like I said before, I wouldn't mind documenting but with stuff like this, how can one do the documentation if you can't even install it?

T-

[The DJ]

And were back to square one. Noone writes documentation.

[HaaRviK]

That's right. How can you document what you can't use? It's simple. Get one person so they can actually install and use it, and task them with documenting the steps to make it work. You guys wrote the program, not us. You should already know what it takes to install it.