Forgive me for being presumptuous. I really am just starting to learn about the area of TV playing/capture/playback/PVR's under Linux. However just having spent a few days getting some bits of this working, and reading this list, it has become apparent that we have a serious case of "more than one way to do it" to quote a perl saying. Everywhere I look in this area, I find several projects. None of them are really complete and fully functional, and it appears, at least to me, that most of them are one or two person operations (at least 90% of the code contributed by these 1 or 2 coders). I started a thread a day or 2 ago about PVR's which apparently has led to the establishment of 2 different projects for that! Lets look at the development model of Linux itself. There are not several different Linux project (I'm speaking of the kernel here). Yes I know about (and use several of) the other free *ix'sm that's not the point. What I'm proposing is that this effort needs to work together more. Dow we really need 10 -> 15 different coders (perhaps here we do). Do we really need 3 to 4 recorders, none of which is really complete yet? Do we really need several different schedule data acquisition systems? Yes these all down load to various storage mediums (XML, MySql, PostgreSQL, flat files), but is it productive to be reinventing all the common pieces here. Can't we bring together most of this under some sort of umbrella organization? If we could, we would be able to better utilize all these very smart, educated, and hard working folks in an effort to generate a world class video processing system. We all need to keep in mind that clasiclly it's the applications that cause purchasing decisions for the OS to be made. Remember VisaCalc? Sold a lot of Apples II's with their OS. Lotus 123 sold a lot of IBM PC's (and clones) thus creating a generation of DOS users. I could go one, but you get the point. Is there some way we can pull all of this together? A Gnome like project for this specialty perhaps? I think the thing that triggered this tirade was the creation of TWO mailing lists on the same day for PVR's! Thanks for luting me rant. -- Stan Brown stanb@xxxxxxxx 843-745-3154 Charleston SC. -- Windows 98: n. useless extension to a minor patch release for 32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor, written by a 2-bit company that can't stand for 1 bit of competition. - (c) 2000 Stan Brown. Redistribution via the Microsoft Network is prohibited.
