Kdenlive Developer Jean-Baptiste Mardelle Is Missing 138
jones_supa writes "Kdenlive's project leader Jean-Baptiste Mardelle, who always used to let people know if he was going to be away for a couple of days, seems to have just disappeared. His last e-mail and blog post were in early July and they didn't suggest any problems. While there's many Kdenlive fans out there for the KDE-focused open-source video editor, it seems new development efforts around the project have ceased. Also the Kdenlive Git repository hasn't seen any new commits (aside from the automated l10n daemon script) since early July. There has been also people in KDE forums and Kdenlive developers' mailing list pondering about the status of the project, being left none the wiser."
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Why would it? The rest of the team would just pick up the software and carry on. Maybe hire a new guy to finish (or rewrite) whatever module the deceased was working on. We've had two people die in the year and a half since I started this job, we still release and bugfix.
That's the problem with a lot of Open Source software revolving around the cult of genius. Brilliant coders, but project management skills of a third grader, and often, the software is tied to the personal life of a single person. Witness S
Re:Hate to say it... (Score:5, Funny)
We've had two people die in the year and a half since I started this job, we still release and bugfix.
And you're still there?! Get out while you have a chance!
Re:Hate to say it... (Score:5, Funny)
What are you talking about? He's discovered the holy grail. What do you do with a bad developer? Kill him and the company will hire a replacement. Brilliant.
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What are you talking about? He's discovered the holy grail. What do you do with a bad developer? Kill him and the company will hire a replacement. Brilliant.
Much better than our company's policy ... which is promote them to Manager.
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There may not be "the rest of the team". You are confusing "closed source" with "company-developed".
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Shit, look at what happened to the internet since Jon Postel was assassinated... :(
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But it sounds like he's dead. I mean, no one just gives up on an open source project.
I blame a Microsoft hit squad. Or maybe Oracle.
My theory (Score:5, Funny)
He's been kidnapped by a Gnome
Can we pay the ransom? (Score:3)
Perhaps we can assemble and offer a large pile of underwear [youtube.com] as ransom?
Will the gnomes return him unharmed, or is that a different business model [dilbert.com]?
Re:My theory (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah. They sent Jodie Foster to interrogate him in his cell.
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Suffix ~cracy refers to rule or government, as in theocracy (rule by the religious).
-cracy means "judge" and the government does that, so that's how it's often used. theocracy - judgment/rule by the religious. So hypo-cracy = under-judge. For when someone underjudges the errors from "their side" while attacking someone else's idea/side.
Yes, I know you were going for funny, but since you replied to me, that's proof I couldn't mod you. And I was curious how the combination came to mean as you indicated. Goes back to misunderstanding of the -cracy (not by you, but by Modern English), or
Reasons (Score:3)
Death; ...Can't think of anything else which would mandate sudden interruptions of this kind. I mean, even if you wake up one day and just say "screw this, not doing it anymore", at least you should leave a message out of respect for your own work, if not the user base.
Family tragedy of some sort;
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That's assuming the user base had any respect for him.
People who develop open-source software in my experience have to learn to deal with being routinely harrangued, insulted, threats of death, all because...say, you decided to go with GPLv3 instead of the BSD license.
I can imagine it being pretty easy to walk away from all of it if that were the case, if you pour your heart into something and it goes entirely unappreciated you don't have much reason to continue. Unfortunately, until someone hears from him
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It's not about the user base respecting you, it's about you respecting your own work.
I ventured to assume that since he was coding voluntarily, this would have been a passion-project. you don't just drop it without warning, really.
Re:Reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that it's a passion-project would be precisely why you'd drop it without warning. Imagine you were working on a product for money and the money dried up, you'd stop developing. The same thing happens to a passion project when the passion dries up.
On top of that, if it's like anything I've ever lost passion for it's usually a case of not logging in for a day, and then a couple of days, and then weeks, and by the time you've accepted that you're actually not ever going to log in again it seems pretty pointless to go and tell people "hey guys I'm gone", especially if you're user base are jerks.
Re:Reasons - He probably had a kid (Score:2)
Can't think of anything else which would mandate sudden interruptions of this kind
I can, maybe he had a kid. Kids tend to put things in perspective. If he had a 9-5 then time really got tight for "Open Source" initiatives, namely diapers, sleepless nights and spending quality time with family.
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Having a kid doesn't stop you from posting a message saying "not gonna do this anymore".
Also kids don't happen suddenly. You got nine months to prepare.
Re:Reasons - He probably had a kid (Score:5, Interesting)
/Adoption can be amusing...
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Yes, let's wait. Far too many possible causes. If it's a personal matter, then leave him be. It's not as if he was getting seriously paid for his work?
If it's just a "simple" case of mid-career "fuck this, I'm going to change my life", then it's just time for the rest of us to also move on or fork the project, if you're technically capable. I mean, the main developer of Bitcoin also disappeared, and Bitcoin is now thousands of times more viral than when he was the alpha developer.
On the other hand, whatever
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That assumes that there was a point where he said "screw this". I have plenty of projects that I just stopped working on, but with none of them I had a clear point were I knew I would stop working on them, it was mostly just getting busy with other stuff and then just never finding the time or motivation to come back to them. The projects just fizzled out, there was never a point were I gave up on them and in theory I might pick them up again one day.
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Pretty good reason to stay there
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You're thinking about Norm from Cheers. It's not related to this thread, I just know you're thinking about him.
Still involved on September 16 (Score:5, Interesting)
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There's dozens of open source video editors out there. For some reason the open source community values the quantity of choices over the quality of any one of them.
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MrEricSir 0.1. It's still buggy, we are migrating from GTK3 to Qt but feel free to download and give it a try.
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(@Zero_Kelvin)
"[P]erchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that."
Re:Still involved on September 16 (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why aficionados of basketball who don't play in the NBA scrupulously avoid any implicit criticism of players, coaches, officials, or owners when they discuss the sport.
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Why not? Direct experience isn't the only means of gathering information.
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Your claim is provably wrong in just a few minutes' worth of Googling. I would say that *most* basketball aficionados explicitly criticize players and others when they discuss the sport. Same with most other sports. What planet are you on?
In any case, doesn't your claim mean that you yourself cannot criticize the original poster? After all, to do so would mean that you yourself must participate in that activity also.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Re:Still involved on September 16 (Score:4, Funny)
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While you could probably figure this out yourself by Googling my username instead of making a needlessly snarky comment, a company I previously worked for started yet another open source video editor, but eventually gave up due to the stability of the open source libraries it relied on.
Live by the media, die by the media. (Score:4, Funny)
Given the nature of the Kdenlive software itself, video editing, I think it would be foolish to rule out a mafiAA hit.
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Given the nature of the Kdenlive software itself, video editing, I think it would be foolish to rule out a mafiAA hit.
Kdenlive is not a threat to anybody - the author probably just tried to import a media file and crashed. People are only surprised by the lack of a backtrace.
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GEEZ. Let's all just engage in rank speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
It took me two minutes to get an address and telephone number for the guy. Maybe it's current, maybe it's not. But instead of just pointlessly speculating, maybe somebody who personally knows him from KDE events should give him a call and see how he's doing. On a side note, I can't believe this is on /. Phoronix? Yes, because its a worthless gossip rag. It's getting really old with /. taking crap articles from Phoronix and putting them on the front page.
Re:GEEZ. Let's all just engage in rank speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
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I would expect the editors to filter out what appears to be factually wrong summary and gratuitous speculation according to camembert's comment [slashdot.org], or at least find a second opinion. I know, I must be new here, but crying-wolf articles such as these curb my page views dramatically.
NSA was June, a lot of people dropped off the net (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of people dropped off the Net in July, well at least they stopped posting and doing stuff until they can secure their email, and communications.
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On a side note, I can't believe this is on /. Phoronix? Yes, because its a worthless gossip rag.
Even worse, it's hidden in the root directory. Come on, who does that?!
Re:I still don't know (Score:4, Informative)
Then read the summary.
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Yes, and waterboarding a personeto death has been declared to be not torture.
The reason to not torture is to not be subject to war crimes trials, as per the Geneva convention. Of course, if you are working for the world's leading superpower, youemay consider that those laws have no force.
Uh, hold on, Ringo. Waterboarding certainly is torture, but I don't know of any deaths related to the use of it by the U.S. Do you have a citation on that? President Obama has also forbidden its use going forward.
And the main reason not to torture is not to avoid being prosecuted, but to avoid having ones own personnel tortured when they are captured.
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It's dangerous to throw that out when it comes to stateless groups - if you treat their people inhumanely, they use it for recruiting purposes. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are cases in point.
But people prone to savage acts (which can be almost anyone given the right circumstances) are going to claim that the Other are doing horrible things regardless of whether it's true. Saying anything necessary to rile your people up against the enemy has been an everpresent tactic since, well, whenever human beings were first able to muster up the strength to attack the other guys. European Jews didn't need to actually drink the blood of a single Gentile baby to become hated and feared.
It wouldn't matter if
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The point is, torturing can only make it worse. That's pretty indisputable, isn't it?
I don't think it matters in most cases. Once stories are being told for propaganda / recruiting purposes, it's a negligible bonus if they turn out to be true. Veracity has a statistically insignificant effect.
I may be a wee bit cynical.
This is a minor quibble, though, and I agree with your point in the main. Torturing can theoretically make things worse from a PR perspective. I wouldn't say "only", and I don't think it's indisputable, because I think the effect is usually going to be zero. I can't think of
Re: maybe he's in a secret CIA torture prison... (Score:2)
For anyone who tortures or orders torture -- GWB/ the King of Terror a la nostradamas included--, the reason to not torture is NOT morality. And such definitely do not care whether others on their own side get tortured: consider Valerie Plame.
No, for such as they, the reason not to torture is to not be caught and punished.
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Re:This is why (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source software sucks
Quite the opposite. Since it's open source, it can be forked and can continue development. With close sourced software, once development halts, for whatever reason, nobody else can work on it.
So this is actually an example why Open Source software rocks.
Re:This is why (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is different from closed source software, how?
Take SpaceMonger, for example. There one day, gone the next. Guy's still around, personal blog notes the disappearance, and essentially told people to just not ask. Well alright, then.
I do agree that when an open source software project goes stagnant because one or more active developers quit, it's rather indicative of the fact that just because the source is available that there is no guarantee whatsoever that somebody else will pick it up. But at least they can.
Re:This is why (Score:5, Informative)
I've noted in my career that you see this happen to proprietary products (of all types). Unless the product has large well organized team and good cash flow to support it, the departure of a keep person often results in the product becoming an orphan. The hurdle of training up a new staff member is too large compared to other things the company could spend money on, and the product dies.
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This is about my level of faith in the Cloud too. It's out there and it works for you, until it's not and it doesn't.
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So, basically OSS programmers program whenever they want, and not just to satisfy the material desires of employers, women, and the pointless treadmill of keeping up with the joneses? Sounds great to me! Hey, the source is out there, if you still need the program, it's available.. What happens when a closed source guy decides his program doesn't get him laid anymore? His site disappears and you're left searching 'oldversion.com' style sites looking for the installer...and you can pray that it'll keep wor
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One thing that always leads to confusion is a situation like this - where a developer just disappears without a word.
It's usually considered common courtesy to not fork a project if someone just needs to take a break for a while, or for that person to delegate in their absence.
Here, the person behind the project simply stopped with no warning - and at least for a month or two I'm sure any potential replacements were nervous about stepping on this guy's toes.
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Becaus closed source products never cease development and no one using closed source software has ever found it abandoned.
Re:This is why (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, so like WinAmp? Gone after Dec 20, 2013.
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Oh, so like WinAmp? Gone after Dec 20, 2013.
no you're not - i use it in linux all the time - only for the usable ui and proper .mod support
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That's more of an indictment of Linux media players rather than a complement of Winamp.
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Re:This is why (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is why (Score:4, Interesting)
The filter for OSS is lack of interest. When no one is interested in the capabilities, it is abandoned.
The filter for closed is lack of sustained monetization, whether the software is still useful to users or not is irrelevant. Many times older versions with fewer use restrictions end up being 'good enough', and kill off the 'business model' the developer wants to use/change to, so the whole program is abandoned. SaaS is a perfect example of this progression. Today's feature is tomorrow's monetization killer and is removed. What the user actually wants becomes more and more irrelevant as it finds its way to bottom denominator hell.
Re:Plenty of OSS are abandoned today (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the difference between Open Source and closed source is that often the Open Source project gets visible before it gets finished, therefore you see the projects that failed early on. OTOH closed source is usually not released before the developer considers it ready for use, therefore you'll never get to see most failed close source projects.
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Closed source development can stop even when it does make money. The company I work for is run on a serial mergers and acquisitions model. They sell the company to a group of investors which proceeds to buy up a bunch of competing products with the intention of sucking them dry in order to fund development of the next generation. That next generation gets built only to the extent that they can sell the company to the next fool. But in the meantime one or more of the acquired products gets shut down as c