dvd+rw-tools were teached to obtain sense information from kernel manually, so they fully work on 5.2.1. cdrecord relies on working autosense and thus don't work on 5.2.1.I would call this behavior of dvd+rw-tools a bug as the CAM standard requires auto-sense to work. If FreeBSD is fixed, the modified dvd+rw-tools will stop working in case it correctly evaluates error codes.
I can assure FreeBSD users that dvd+rw-tools won't stop working the moment the kernel bug in question is fixed. Nor would you have to recompile dvd+rw-tools after it's fixed. dvd+rw-tools detect the kernel deficiency at run-time and are designed to work in either particular situation.
Can one criticize dvd+rw-tools for so to say sweeping the bug under the carpet, which might have indirectly complicated life for other applications and their developers? Well, one could *if* it was done silently. But it wasn't. Thorough problem analysis was presented to the public on a FreeBSD list (see http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2003-December/007424.html) the moment this [non-intrusive] workaround was introduced in dvd+rw-tools 5.15.x update. The problem description explicitly mentions that *all* recording applications are affected, thus depicting how serious problem is. A.