On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 12:33:31 -0700, Tyler Larson <fedora-devel@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Jamie has a point, you know. Albeit cleverly disguised amidst the sarcasm. calling bmp half-working is a bit over the top. The question has never been is this a perfect replacement.. the question has been is it good enough. I don't feel the objections raised so far are significant barriers to replacing xmms. You are free to disagree with me ( until my army of demonic minions steal your soul and rid you of your pesky free will) but I don't think its particularly rational to expect a perfect replacement of any piece of software when the discussion turns to wholesale replacement. Replacements will have their own strengths and weaknesses that need to be compared. > > Progress for progress' sake is an absurd motivation. No one is arguing that. Progress is a messy non-linear business... trade-offs are made among a a number of factors.. 2 steps forward ...1 step back.. > That is, replacing > an app with a functionally inferior one just because it uses old > libraries isn't sensible. If you replace an app, the new one should be > *better* than the old one. are you saying that gtk2 doesnt have improvements over gtk1? 2 steps forward... 1 step back. If you are looking for monotonic forward progress on ALL aspects ALL the time.. i envy your idealism however naive it is. >The goal isn't to make new programs better, > it's to use the best programs. Is it? I'm not particular sure that is THE goal at all. I think there are a number of competing goals which demand compromise and trade-offs. Everything has an opportunity cost.. the 'best' program 2 years from now may not be the 'best' program today.... and its an absolute WASTE of effort to continue to focus testing manhours through test-releases of core on an application that is a dead-end. If bmp is close enough, and it has a development future that appears to provide better integrations and features into the distributions long term... then its worth considering.. even though its not a perfect replacement for xmms. I think its close enough to be a replacement and that its gtk2 provides inherent benefit. Feel free to disagree. > Any decision that meets one of these lesser goals (like shrinking the > distro size) but still runs contrary to the more important principle of > improving the user experience is a bad decision to make. Don't destroy > the forest to save a tree. A decisions that has a significant and lasting long term benefit can cause short term negative impact. 2 steps forward.. and 1 step back.. is still progress. -jef"doing the progress cha-cha"spaleta
