scdbackup a écrit 1 commentaire

  • # Une contradiction generale

    Posté par  . En réponse au journal c'est beau la liberté de forker. Évalué à 1.

    Bonjour,

    (chapeau au direction de Joerg Schilling, le vrais maitre)

    Mon francais est trop mal. Je vais continuer en anglais
    si vous permettez.

    My name is Thomas Schmitt, scdbackup at gmx dot net.

    I am developing and maintaining a less known backup tool,
    as my mail address suggests. This tool relies on Joerg
    Schilling's cdrecord for CD burning.

    During the last years, frightening quarrels erupted around
    this only viable way to burn a data CD on Linux. It became
    obvious that big trouble was on the horizon.
    So i began to draft a petition to LKML, like:
    "Please give us burn frontends some primitive replacement
    for cdrecord. So we do not have to fiddle with raw devices,
    O_DIRECT, cdrdao, et al., when cdrecord and Linux divorce."

    I googled to become prepared for such a move. I found a
    surprise:
    http://icculus.org/burn/
    Existing since begin of 2004. Quite inactive but with the
    source of a program that was not totally useless: test/burniso.c
    and a foundation library which seemed in workable shape.

    Beginning with the traces in December 2005 mail archive
    http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libburn/2005-December/(...)
    i developed cdrskin
    http://scdbackup.sourceforge.net/cdrskin_eng.html
    which had quite exhausted the documented possibilities of
    libburn and the abilities of myself in february 2006:
    http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libburn/2006-February/(...)

    By non-acceptance of my "whitelist"-patch, cdrskin was forced
    to maintain an own fork libburn-0.2.ts. Nevertheless it was
    prepared by macros to run on libburn-0.2 CVS version - if only
    that patch had been included.

    cdrskin was mentioned on LKML, Joerg Schilling stated that
    libburn does not work (this was not really untrue, btw) and
    the community issued a striking silence.
    I mentioned it on cdwrite@other.debian.org (where i meet
    Joerg Schilling and Andy Polykov, when i have a problem),
    it did its job in confirming that a dead drive was dead.
    Elsewise: nearly silence. People want full cdrecord.

    cdrskin *did work* in versions 0.1.0, 0.1.1, 0.1.2, 0.1.3
    on icculus.org/burn on kernel 2.4 and on kernel 2.6.
    It had a homepage, it offered a source tarball, it offered
    a static x86 Linux binary for quick test, it had docs.

    Nobody ever gave it a chance, because it was no complete
    cdrecord emulation. cdrecord is still better. No doubt.

    Then the quarrel erupted. The seismologists knew in advance.
    I knew not. Mario Danic knew.
    Then this:
    http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libburn/2006-July/0004(...)

    What a challenge !
    Two (2 !) bystanders stood up. One was me.
    Both mildly questioning Mario's approach and waiting for
    the thunder from our hosts.
    Five days later, it made rather a noise like "crack"
    http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libburn/2006-August/00(...)

    I was very undecided and split myself. I dumped all open requests
    (20+) to Mario's fancy ticket system and i stated my position as
    user of libburn:
    http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libburn/2006-August/00(...)

    After i bonked Mario with a "What is wrong with my whitelist patch ?"
    he included it in
    http://libburn.pykix.org
    and i could give up my involuntary libburn fork !

    Mario did not fork. I did in december 2005. He merged me in.
    I became his team mate with what you deem so abominable.
    And i again stated my position publicly:
    http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libburn/2006-August/00(...)
    This is the *most recent* post on that list. 3 weeks old.
    Qu'est-ce que c'est - l'autisme ?

    We *do not* have a libburn fork right now. A fork needs two prongs.
    We got what german language botanically calls a "geiler Trieb"
    - a single green branch out of the tip of the stem.

    cdrskin is now covered as "unstable" by major distros, google
    does not trigger a spelling correction any more, Debian's
    package page outranks cdrskin's homepage on google (congrats :))
    When i ask for drive tests i get replies with 10+ manufacturer
    names, in part i never heard of them.


    This all is Mario Danic's merit. Kudos.

    I had waited 4 weeks for a reply of Derek. That would mean we
    were 4 weeks behind of where we are now. Mario was right -
    i would have been wrong. Nobody asked me, luckily.


    Meanwhile i found out that cdrskin worked by mere accident.
    Leaving its way of using libburn caused immediate failure.
    I found resource leaks with file descriptors, fandango on core,
    systemwide interference with any /dev/sgN or /dev/hdX that
    could appear as a CD drive.
    My cdrskin avoided all those pitfalls by accident and by
    its "whitelist" patch, which emerged from my uncomfortable
    feelings towards libburn's mandatory bus scan.

    Meanwhile we offer a honest README
    http://libburn.pykix.org/browser/trunk/README?format=raw
    which gives an overview on project and our justification of
    what we decided to do.

    Meanwhile we offer a non-self-sarcastic introduction
    of the libburn API
    http://libburn-api.pykix.org
    This is a complete rewrite of
    http://icculus.org/burn/doc/
    where i myself started my own libburn encounters in 2005.
    If you see remaining copyright of Derek Formeman and Ben
    Jansens in the comparison of both, please contact me
    via mail to above address or via libburn-hackers at pykix dot org.


    We do not hide the ancestry of our project. We pay due respect
    to its initiators (who still are in part our originators).
    We become ancestors ourselves the way that franconians became
    ancestors of great nobility: by taking what others don't grab
    strong enough. C'est GPL, n'est-ce pas ?

    We will work our way down, grok and rewrite in our own words
    and only copying single lines, if ever, to avoid typos.


    About me:

    I myself am not affiliated with any distro or party in the
    cdrecord quarrels. I feel free to cooperate with Eduard Bloch
    and with Joerg Schilling at the same time. We three are germans,
    so it is not without friction.
    I never exchanged personal insults with them, though,
    and i believe both deem me worth of cooperation. At least within
    the limits of my own claims as actually an app programmer.

    For my copyright-related activities i am open to criticism
    and discussion. The question is:

    How do we get the only known technical alternative to cdrecord
    into a shape that license questions can be solved in a timely
    way that surely complies with the *idea* of open source ?

    Alternative. Timely. Idea. Those are the key words.


    I am open and free. Are you ? Then give us a chance.

    Even on fancy realtime channels where i refuse to watch,
    because i am an old C fart who will celebrate his 20 years
    Unix jubilee this november, who still has a bootable
    Linux 0.99 at hand and who never installed a Linux himself.

    This statement is not coordinated with my team mate Mario Danic.
    It is my own personal view of things and needs neither an team ok
    nor is it subject to a team veto.
    It is also my challenge to Mario's critics to stay fair and
    to cut out community stereotypes.

    I will inform Mario now, after posting it.
    I will urge him, to mention a link to it whenever he has the
    slightest suspicion that a critic of him did not read it yet
    and possibly did not follow the many URLs in it.


    Chapeau ... to Joerg Schilling and Andy Polyakov, burn masters.