(2015-12-14, 15:17)Martijn Wrote: (2015-12-14, 13:18)xbmclinuxuser Wrote: I'm giving up on you, too. I'm sorry that you are such an uncaring, uncompassionate individual that you don't seem to understand how your actions affect others, but I doubt anything I could say would ever change that.
You never met me i guess?
If you don't agree just keep using v15 till eternity.
Martijn, am I missing something here? I don't think I have ever had a problem with you, at least not recently (my memory is pretty short).
Actually I would have LOVE to have kept using Gotham or Helix until eternity - they were stable and they worked, and didn't give me any problems at all. But as I have explained on more than one occasion, for Linux users there is a vicious cycle here that forces you to upgrade. If I were using Windows, I could save an old .EXE file of an earlier version of Kodi and keep installing it for years, even if I upgraded to a new version of Windows. Similarly, on OS X I can save an older Kodi .dmg file and reinstall that. But Ubuntu does not offer software in those types of packages. In Ubuntu you have repositories and you can only get the latest version of Kodi from whatever repository you choose. And you are forced to upgrade Ubuntu every so often in order to keep getting security updates. So when you upgrade Ubuntu or get new hardware, you can only install the latest version of Kodi, because there's simply no way a typical user can install an older version. I know that you guys who build your own packages could probably do it but then if you know enough to do that you probably know how to fix any issues that really bother you.
The other problem that is specific to Kodi is that every time you guys release a new version, then even if you keep the old one it seems like over time addons gradually stop working. So even if you were on Windows or OS X and had saved or acquired an older .exe or .dmg file, you may not be able to get any addons you need to use it. But as long as you don't get new hardware, don't upgrade the OS, and don't depend on any addons that get content from the Internet you can skip a version or two, and I have done so in the past.
Of course you guys know all this but I see you are now in the mode where you just can't put yourselves in the shoes of a user. All the other developers think you're a great guy so who cares what users think? I know of one other project where the developers have gotten into this mindset and it has been a very self-destructive cycle for them, to the point where a lot of their former supporters have given up them and their biggest supporter was so P.O.'ed that he actually forked the project and started his own version (of course you don't have to worry about me doing that because I couldn't write code if my life depended on it, and you guys haven't
yet gotten to the point of utter obnoxiousness that they reached). All I have ever said is that when users come to depend on some particular thing working a certain way, and then you come along and break that functionality, fixing it should be a high priority and should not have to wait for the next major release, especially when the current release is still in beta (I still don't understand what the point is of having a beta, if not to catch bugs before they are released). And it really infuriates users when you create a problem and then try to say that fixing it is actually a new feature, and therefore the request to fix it is a feature request and not a bug. Again, to a user, the previous functionality is BROKEN, so it's a BUG.
I honestly don't think any of the Kodi developers are truly bad guys but a few of you do have huge egos and I'm not the type of person who will stroke someone else's inflated ego. If I think you have broken Kodi, I will tell you. If all you want are users that are part of the "hallelujah chorus" that will say "Amen" to everything you do and tell you what wonderful guys you are, then you should probably cancel my account because I will never be THAT type of user. In the past I thought Kodi was a pretty great piece of software but my question now is, are you writing it for users, or for yourselves? If only for yourselves then why even offer it to others, you are only frustrating them when you make changes they don't want and inhibiting the development of other similar software, since right now Kodi is the software to beat in this niche and that's a pretty high bar for any new project. But if, as I suspect, you really do intend for Kodi to be used by others then please consider the impact of changes you make on us users. What may seem like a small, insignificant change to you can really inhibit our enjoyment and use of Kodi.
One final note, why on earth would you say that a bug fix/feature request can't be implemented in the next release version if that release is still in beta? I hate to keep harping on this but it makes no sense to me at all. In every other software project I have seen, the whole purpose of a beta is to catch problems before they make it into the general release. Maybe you think I am the only one bothered by this change on the timers page but if you release it this way I think you're going to start getting reports from others, and you know how to fix it (I'm getting the impression it's a minor fix) but for some odd reason you decided to wait until after Jarvis. Why? Policy? Who made the policy? Maybe it's time to tweak that policy a bit, since it's negatively impacting your users.
In the Windows world I have seen developers make immediate fixes to a current release version when users discover a bug (and I have never seen a Windows developer try to recategorize a bug as a feature request - mind you I am talking about pure Windows software here, not cross-platform, but that seems to be a much more common thing among Linux developers, something else I do not understand). Really I don't understand why some Linux and cross-platform developers seem so much more hostile toward their users than developers who stick strictly to Windows or OS X, but I suppose asking that is like asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I am not asking you to like me and to be honest I don't like some of you (big shock I am sure), but I am not your only user, and if you don't like me maybe it's because I'm the only one who is honest enough to tell you when I think you're doing the wrong thing. Maybe I could express that in a better way that would not ruffle your feathers quite so much, but I just never learned that skill, unfortunately.