Around 2007, the old community developer group largely ceased to exist
(people simply got occupied with with other things, real life stuff and such).
Anyway, no one was able or willing to put in the several weeks of full-time
work required to merge a new upstream release, and so matters mostly
just stayed as they where. Yet this wasn't the end of Cinelerra-CV.

For what it's worth, Cinelerra was roughly finished by then, very much
usable for serious work, if you know how to get along with "her".
There was always enough competence left to address the serious problems.
The packaging and build infrastructure was basically in place, and
Cinelerra-CV had been included in the official repos of several major
distros by then.

At that time, a group of people, including the Lumiera devs, agreed to
do what's necessary to maintain the status quo and keep the critical
infrastructure running. Our consensus is that people must be able
to code and share code. And people must be able to exchange ideas
and help each other. A lot of further people contributed in the
same spirit, most notably by maintaining the packages for the
various distros, fixing bugs, improving the engine and library
integration. So to summarise, this community wasn't in the
shape to get anywhere, but it was alive and able to go on.


There is no way the activities of Michael Collins collide with
that situation, or endanger the Cinelerra Community directly.
But I can't see a clear alternative stance in any of his announcements
and thus there is no base for a controversy either.

I already mentioned that there might be a clash of cultures involved.
Michael seems to think that big events need to happen, that we need
announcements and be in the press, that the goal is to get the interest
of investors and hit the market, otherwise you would be a "failure".

Sure, you can move things this way with money, but this is not the only
possible way -- and some stuff you can't buy with money. Moreover, in the
world of OpenSource and voluntary collaboration, there is likewise a clear
Code of Conduct, and Michael did not act in accordance to these rules.

* you need to approach the community where it is, explain your ideas
and deal with the responses, especially of those actually involved.
Michael never showed up here at this mailing list prior to his actions.

* you need to earn your respect, be helpful and show you can make
things work -- before you announce great undisclosed things to happen.
Michael didn't offer to help with server administration, nor did he
show any significant coding contributions lately.

* and most importantly, you're dealing with people, not resources.
It's a good idea to be modest and approachable.



At the point we're now, the best thing *we* can do is to wait and see.
And continue with our actual concern. We should really reconsider what
goals we want to approach next, and how. But anyway, our new domain name
"cinelerra-cv.org" is an improvement and might clarify what we do was
never meant to be "the only true Cinelerra", but a community effort.
The server and infrastructure remains in place and personally I will
contribute what's necessary to keep it this way, unless something
happens to convince me another solution would be a real improvement
for the community's situation.

-- Ichthyo