When you exercise at the gym you see people who are likely just starting with the whole workout thing. Some may have been motivated by realizing that their bodies were not going to last much longer if they didn’t make some major lifestyle changes. Achieving good health is not a state that an unhealthy person can attain overnight. Maintaining good health over the long term requires ongoing discipline.
To tie this into multimedia and open source, I think it’s really fortunate that there has been a talented community of hackers working on open source multimedia playback and encoding solutions for so long. Can you imagine where the open source community would have been in terms of multimedia support if people had just started working on the problem this year? There’s a huge legacy of multimedia formats to support. I mean, the guru does amazing work, but imagine if he only started the effort sometime this year and largely worked on his own. To have to start now would be tantamount to the 350 lb (160 kg) fellow at the gym starting down his long, painful road. Thankfully, the community is more equivalent to long-time regular gym patron and body builder.
I just think it’s a good situation to be in. I shudder when I think what would have happened if open source multimedia playback solutions had been neglected for so long that the community didn’t have the technical knowledge to support its own.
…and instead of going to the gym and getting slim, said hackers sit at home and support legacy multimedia formats. Of course, I’m kidding. Doing “both” is quite possible.
I once had a colleague who told me I ought to spend less time with reverse engineering and more time with forward engineering. A lofty objective, to be sure, but it also disregards the fact that there is a huge legacy of proprietary formats to support.