Re: [gentoo-user] Removing pulseaudio

[Randy Barlow <randy@electronsweatshop.com>]

I've been a little surprised at some of the posts in this thread. As
some others have pointed out, I do not believe it is fair to state that
anyone is forcing you to use any particular software (such as
PulseAudio, or udev), as it is your choice to use Linux or not in the
first place. Why do these same people not complain about being "forced"
to use the Linux kernel? After all, it would certainly be tricky to
install Gentoo on metal, and not use the Linux kernel.

As an open source developer and as an open source consumer (and of
course I consume far more open source efforts than I contribute), I
think it is important to keep in mind that we are benefiting from the
generosity of others. I think the idiom, "Don't look a gift horse in the
mouth" is probably appropriate to this discussion.

Another important point that has been said by others that I think is
worth highlighting is that there are many ways to go without using
PulseAudio if you really want ALSA. Gnome happens to depend on it, but
that's the choice of Gnome developers and not us.

I happen to work on an open source server product that requires the use
of MongoDB. There are many community users who complain about that, as
they would rather us use the DB of their preference (PostgreSQL is a
common request). I don't disagree that it would be cool if my project
could use either DB and let the users go with their own choice, but it's
not a priority for us due to the long list of other features and bugs
that we need to deal with. It's so much simpler for us to only support
one database, and so it allows us to deliver a lot of other cool
features instead. I think that is a reasonable decision on our part, and
some of our community members disagree and that's fine. I don't think we
or they feel any animosity about it. It would significantly increase our
QE and development costs if we were to support other DBs. I think Gnome
and PA can be thought of in a similar light.

I will divulge that I happen to like Gnome and PulseAudio, and so
consider me biased. I did find the /usr thing with udev to be kind of
inconvenient since I did happen to have a separate /usr, but I dealt
with it and am grateful to have a free udev that I can use.

Note that I'm not saying you need to like or use these technologies - I
just ask that you realize that there are pretty good reasons for Gnome
to simplify their dependency list, and that you do still have great
freedom in your software choices. There are many great alternatives to
Gnome. Open Source software is incredible, and I think it's exciting to
think about all the many choices it has brought us so far. Any one of us
could fork any OSS project we wanted at any time and tweak it for what
we want and share with the world. That is really good.

-- 
Randy Barlow