Am 05.03.2011 14:26, schrieb Fabien:

> Whoever (anonymous, so far) wrote the current www.irtc.org homepage,
> related or not to the current POV-Ray Team, is adopting the same
> irritating attitude that I describe (mainly : the piping is broken,
> we won't call a plumber, and we keep the keys of the house).
>
> And I'm linking both because I've seen the same attitude in POV-Ray
> making.

*HELLO?!?!*

You're writing to someone who is actively involved in this "POV-Ray 
making", and I will *not* let your statemend stand unchallenged.

I started using POV-Ray in September 2008 (after having toyed around 
with it some decade earlier). Back then, I only had a single-core 
machine, and 3.6 and MegaPOV were fine for my purposes. Some 2 months 
later though, I bought a quad-core system to set aside just for 
rendering - initially with the intention of running multiple instances 
of MegaPOV in parallel - and found that POV-Ray 3.7 would promise more 
speed than 3.6, if only it would run radiosity on multiple cores. It 
didn't, and the few development status reports that trickled in 
indicated that development was stalling, and radiosity was still way 
down on the dev team's priority list.

So in december, I wrote this newsgroup post in povray.beta-test:

http://news.povray.org/povray.beta-test/thread/%3Cweb.494c5db633949b3be71a54f80%40news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=358039&toff=350

To make a long story short: I was involved in the making of POV-Ray in 
no time flat, and got free hand in designing a way to make radiosity 
work with SMP (even including some architectural change to the rest of 
the code) and rid it of several design uglies. Since then, I went on to 
implement subsurface scattering (an idea that Chris Cason came up with), 
implemented a bunch of smaller features that I wanted to see in POV-Ray, 
gave gamma issues a thorough addressing because /I/ felt it important, 
and - of that I do take particular pride, and will not suffer having you 
slander those efforts - addressed virtually any reported bug that I felt 
capable of addressing.

 From what I have experienced since I first volunteered to get my hands 
dirty, there is no secrecy about POV-Ray; no closed circle of ivory 
tower developers; there is no resentment to accept help - to the 
contrary. There is just too much to do to waste time and energy on 
begging for help, because experience is that the resonance to such 
requests is pretty scant. So instead of suffering the frustration to be 
expected (or maybe even start whining and complaining, like /certain/ 
people do prefer instead of being constructive), the people involved 
just continue being as productive as they possibly can, and as their 
day-time jobs & families allow.


If you'd ask Le Forgeron, I'm pretty sure he'd have a similar story to 
tell. He, too, recently decided to get his hands dirty and become involved.


> The message on the homepage says it's a "software problem", nothing
> to do with closing voluntarily, whatever the reason ! And, in your
> hypothesis, there's a solution : HAND THE KEYS.

Yes. But the productive first step on your behalf should have been to 
*ask* for the keys yourself, instead of ranting that the keys hadn't 
been handed to anyone else. To whom, I ask you, should they have been 
given? Who stepped forward and volunteered to continue that business?

As for being a software problem vs. closing voluntarily, the one doesn't 
exclude the other: It probably is a software problem so severe that the 
maintainer of the site sees himself unable to fix it given his limited 
time & energy.

(Another note here: the current maintainer stepped up after a long 
desperate search for someone to revive the IRTC; there was no reason for 
him to assume that there would be anyone around just waiting to lend a 
hand or even take over the business)

> At some point, a single person wrote that "broken, don't care" homepage.
> It's that person I'm yelling at, asking that something is done, or
> handled to other volunteers !

Still you're also ranting about "POV-Ray" in general, and about the 
"attitude in POV-Ray making". It is *that* which I will not suffer.

And, to re-iterate: Instead of just building up steam and then 
exploding, you should have addressed that person with a suggestion to 
/help/ first.

Now, with that attitude of yours, I wonder whether that person would 
still be willing to hand the keys to /you/ - or if he did, whether any 
of his "customers" would be willing to deal with you. You managed to 
offend the current IRTC "owner", his "customers", the people providing 
the market infrastructure, and virtually anyone on the marketplace, in 
just a single posting. Bravo.

I guess it would be prudent for you to step down from your box at 
speakers' corner, and mumble a humble "sorry" to the offended crowd, 
before they stone you to death with ripe tomatoes and rotten eggs (be 
warned - that's a very long, humiliating way of dying). But that choice 
is up to you.

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