On 07/08/2015 at 02:38 PM, David Wright wrote: > Quoting Nicolas George (george@nsup.org): > and to summarise the release notes: > > Debian wheezy [...]: ffmpeg has been replaced by [...] > (libav-tools). It provides [...] and prepares an upgrade path for > existing application packages. installation of packages from > third-party repositories should not be necessary. > > So if Debian has moved forward from ffmpeg to libav, then using > ffmpeg is "going back", unless you mean something else by those two > words. The error here is in thinking of the move from FFmpeg to libav as being "forward". "Back" is not the opposite of "forward" in all senses; the full opposite of "forward" would be "backward". The switch from FFmpeg to libav was more of a move sideways, from one fork of a project (the original) to another. Switching from the latter to the former is a move "back" only in the sense of going to a place we've been before; it's not a move "backward" in the sense of going from newer/better to older/worse. When the switch from FFmpeg to libav was made, the people who decided to make it did believe that it would be a move forward, and that the libav fork would be a better option as development continued than the original FFmpeg was or would continue to be. As the discussion in the thread which I linked to has concluded, this does not appear to have held true in practice. With what we now know about both projects and with the benefit of hindsight about their development and adoption, it therefore makes sense to switch back to FFmpeg, specifically because that is not a move backward. > BTW, the OP didn't say "getting stuck" but "stuck going back". Stuck > has the sense of "to fail to proceed or advance" and it often > expresses an emotion of defeat at the prospect. It can have that sense, but its core sense is more basic, and that's not how I read it in this case. In this case, I interpret "stuck going back to ffmpeg" not as meaning "having to go back to older and presumably worse" but as meaning something more like "having to put in the extra work to get the better option which used to be easily available". Again, "back" in a sense of "to a place where we've been before" rather than a sense of "to something older and presumably worse". -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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