From: Paul Louden <paulthenerd_at_gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:29:28 -0500

XavierGr wrote:
> will be rejected "on the shrine" of binsize and "the doctrine of
> settings-bloat".

Can we please try to have this discussion without resorting to rhetoric
and terms like this?

And, as a point of interest, we're already using ~20-25% of the
available RAM on the Cowon Coldfire-based players as it stands, binsize
is not *only* important to the Archos players. We're also looking at
players that only have 384kb of RAM, which makes binsize an even more
significant hurdle for those (which will probably need a specially toned
down build of Rockbox anyway).

But the idea that we should accept *every* feature if it's coded well
is, honestly, way over the top.

Yes, feature acceptance has slowed down. So what? We can't always accept
features at the same rate. Over time the biggest, most interesting
features will be done. Our choice then, is "slow down feature acceptance
because the remaining features really aren't that worth accepting" or
"begin accepting less worthy features in the name of simply being able
to say we're still adding features at the same rate."

Honestly, in my opinion, complaining that we're accepting features too
slow is ignoring the fact that the project is quite mature now. We need
to be picky about features. Yes, sometimes we're too picky, but the
*rate* at which features are accepted is irrelevant since it's a
function of "the number of good features available" rather than "the
height of the bar of acceptance." If we lowered the bar, we'd eventually
slow down again as we run out of medium features. So while we're
discussing this, let's keep it on "what is the barrier of entry" rather
than talking about the rate of feature addition, which is a false metric.
Received on 2008-10-28