This is taken out of context. He actually respects contributors, including their decision to not implement reverse play.

The meaning here is "if you think the existing contributors are so incompetent and lazy as you are implying, then do you better".

I think he got caught up in the argument and thet he should have just put the question in a FAQ entry and lock the thread before people start mentioning nazis.

> lock the thread before people start mentioning nazis.

Which will invariably happen. What was that "rule" called again?

It's Godwin's law (of Nazi analogies): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Thanks for this. It seems you got that I misunderstood. I've clarified my point in another reply.

Also agree that if this is a question that keeps coming up a much better response would be to simply explain your reasoning once in an FAQ that carefully presents the argument and point all future discussions to that entry. Done.

To the average user, it's not at all obvious why reverse play is so much harder than it looks. Surely it's possible to understand that users might be confused by this? An well written FAQ on the subject would solve all of this.

The QuickTime API supported reverse play in 1993 (or before), when I enjoyed using it for "back and forth" animated sprites. Here's the documentation I wrote when working at Kaleida Labs on a ScriptX animation library that used QuickTime, and depended on its support for playing videos backwards:

https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/lang/scriptx/anim.ht...

ScriptX's QuickTime renderer would even play audio backwards and at whatever speed, too. ScriptX had excellent multimedia synchronization, and it would have been considered a terrible bug if it was not possible to synchronize video and audio with any arbitrary clock, no matter what the scale and direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScriptX

The whole point that Remi was making is that doing this for one format is probably easy. Doing this for all formats in a consistent manner with a consistent experience is not easy, verging on impossible. Other players only support a limited set of formats, so can do this easily. VLC supports everything, so therefore has to handle all the bizarre quirks that make this a very difficult task.

Quite remarkable that you call the developer toxic when those were his replies paraphrasing what users had said and demanded up-thread.

> that is no way to talk about other volunteer developers that contribute their time.

He is not dissing the other developers. He is one of those developers that had been called lazy and incompetent by the forum posters. For example (from the thread):

> it's mostly an excuse to not implement the feature (and be "cool" about it with one-word answers).

> Please consider implementing this. It's not hard.

> All of the players I've named are open source, so it's easy to check how they are doing it.

> Seriously how hard is it to implement it? All Ive been hearing from the developers are excuses, excuses, excuses. I dont see how other players were able to have it. This is just pure laziness.

> I'm not here to program the app, I'm just here to find a simple feature and/or request it.

Personally, I would hold the people using a free product and begging for features without contributing anything to a higher standard than the developers that donate their time implementing it.

Yes ok, I did read the thread but didn't get the reference. I wouldn't say it's "quite remarkable", more simply that I misunderstood. My apologies.

But I stand by the broader point that I do not think his attitude is at all constructive or helpful, and while I am sure he is fed of up what he views as entitled users this is not a productive way to handle it. The toxicity is that it casts shade on FOSS and pushes people away from the community. And VLC would be half what it is today without it's users. He would do well to remember that, too.

Ah, fair enough. I think we agree mostly then - he is fed up, he is justified in it, yet it is not very productive. (I wouldn't call it toxic, though.)

> And VLC would be half what it is today without it's users. He would do well to remember that, too.

I disagree. It would be exactly the same as it is now without the users. The users have not contributed anything to the project. Popularity doesn't write code, it just creates communication overhead.

Again, this is not commercial software. Commercial software needs popularity. For FOSS projects, popularity is cool and can be an ego-boost for the maintainers, even open some doors and get some funding, but it's not the point of thing (and never covers costs anyway). The point is to write some good code that scratches some itch the maintainers have.

That whole point of view from the users, of "you owe us because your thing is popular now" is toxic entitlement. If you didn't contribute to the project, you didn't affect it, and you're owed nothing, absolutely nothing, by the maintainers. Everyone would do well to remember that.

It may be slightly rude but it's also correct and it's something that not enough people realize, so they need ot be told. If you want something done, you can ask, but if the answer is no, you have to do it yourself. That's reality in FOSS.