PulseAudio 15 Released With Bluetooth Improvements, Better Hardware Support

[oiaohm]

Ok, so I asked and researched more from open discussions, Let me begin from the beginning:

This whole mess started December 2019. Pali created a Merge Request at pulseaudio for using libopenaptx which he created.
He received some feedback which he incorporated and then nothing really happened except trying to essentially abuse him; for example he was asked to rework a whole subsystem, which has nothing to do with this Merge Request. At some point and after similar big Merge requests by others which got merged in a matter of days, he got a bit pissed and asked about how it stands around this Merge request. Following that a XOrg maintainer temporarily banned him, officially for breaking the CoC, but that was only specified (multiple weeks) later. Some other people asked why and they got also banned for that, additionally Pali got perma-banned too.
Following that Pali retracted the MR by other means and asked them to not merge his work.
This so far is fine for the most part (I still don't get his perma-ban, but well), but then something REALLY interesting happened: Somebody made a patch based upon his work (if you compare the 2 patchsets, you can see that it's Pali's with some additions) and REMOVED his Copyright. If you look at PulseAudio source code, you can see that at the beginning of each file there is a Copyright-notice about who holds copyright to the file. Because 2 people worked on the file, both should be there since both hold Copyright to it, but that is not the case. Additionally, in the Merge Request (which was merged) Pali was only mentioned as "a developer who was recently banned" instead of by name.
This caused Pali to change the license. Also, in his opinion this is a license break which would cause Article 8 of the LGPL to become active (a retrospective right termination).

In a whole, quite a mess and the fact the there are quite a lot of deleted messages doesn't help...

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/merge_requests/227#note_728200

The reality is it quite well documented in the gitlab. Pali admits to get abusive with the maintainers. The reality here I have attempted to submit many patches over the years none them have made it in with other developers in the project deciding to solve the problem a different way.

Yes something that people have to be aware of just because you are asked to do something by a maintainer does mean you have to. You have the right to polite say you don't have the time or are willing to work on that.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/merge_requests/227#note_728234

Yes there are quite a lot of deleted messages the above note explains a lot of them. If where in mailing list you have the death threat email messages people were not just asking why was pali banned and for possible reverse some where threatening in ways that are not just a break of the CoC but are in fact illegal globally. Yes leaving a death threat and other globally illegal actions in messages up is a way to get your project removed from hosting everywhere.

Horrible part about death threats and equal you cannot post who did them to the internet you forward that information to police then you have to leave that in polices hands. Yes you have to delete all copies of the messages from general access this includes informing places like archive.org to remove their copies. So a foolish person doing a death threat causes a maintainer massive amount of work doing what is legally required. This is not doing what the CoC requires this is doing the general laws on this issue mandates globally. Failure to-do so can either see you hosting provider remove your project or your hosting provide themselves losing their connection to the internet.

Most people don't read the different countries telecommunication acts the the terms of usage of a phone line/data cable..... all the possible ways to connect to the internet forbid death threats with the punishment being a ban for usage. Yes it possible to be legally banned from using a phone or internet this is why hosting providers don't mess around with this stuff.

Please note the telecommunication act over a death threat being on line is not just against the person who did death threat but against any party who does not take corrective action to remove death threat from public access. There is a historic one that death threat was printed in a newspaper that the newspaper company had to get every single paper back and destroy it worst part for that paper they failed to get 10 papers out of 60000 for destruction and ceased to be a company with total loss of assets to the government so these laws predate the internet and they are a lot worse for the hosting providers than the individual.

Yes pali asking for everyone who was banned to be unbanned is unreasonable and the maintainers cannot legally agree this because some of those people who got upset with pali being banned has done actions that are illegal and threat to hosting. Yes even pali admits that he got abusive with maintainers but I will give pali this he did not step over the legal line to be a risk hosting being no more problem is some of the people who complained about pali ban absolutely did.

Of course pali so called supporters step into illegal really did not help pali case either they are not support you want as normally makes maintainers more hard line why let pali back when his supporters are going to break the law and threaten project ability to have hosting. Yes this explains why freedesktop and x.org started taking a really hard line and why they were not describing what they were doing. People had stepped over the legal line with death threats and if freedesktop and x.org did not respond hard line the hosting servers for all projects could end up with no internet connection.

Death threat crap end up with very little details and all messages deleted from on-line access. Please note its a different matter for people like me who were part of the mailing list and have own personal archives from the time as we still have the death threat messages and who did them. Please note even that I have the messages I cannot repost them on the internet and I cannot email even in a encrypted achieve other than to law enforcement (even then law enforcement prefers in person delivery) and I cannot send them on paper copies or as usb key encrypted though normal post(or any other transport system to another person) or I will end up breaking the laws around death threats. This highly illegal this is to the horrible point that even if I let you into my house to view the death threats if you are not a licensed private investigator or a police officer or my legal lawyer this can also be offence on my part.

Please be clear I am not blaming pali for the highly illegal messages. But the high illegal messages is why pali request for everyone to be unbanned is impossible and a unreasonable request. The highly illegal nature of those messages mean that the case cannot be made to pali about why they are banned because this would also result in perform illegal actions. The law is a total ass at times.

The CoC a lot of it is just a statement of general globally common law some the globally common laws are like the death threats ones where you have to obey or risk not being on the internet and not being able to use any form of communication. The bigger and simpler you are to find the more likely with these law breaches they will simple cut you off of the internet. Please note when I say any form of communication I mean that yes if you were in the same room as me and and read out what was in some of those death threat messages I will have technically broken the law as well if you are not licensed private investigator or a police officer or my legal lawyer. Yes the USA first amendment does not protect your right to speak the contents of a death threat.

[khanich]

@oiaohm Good to know, but we was it now explained that there were death threats? You wouldn't need to say who or what was in there, but just that they were there.

[oiaohm]

@oiaohm Good to know, but we was it now explained that there were death threats? You wouldn't need to say who or what was in there, but just that they were there.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/merge_requests/227#note_728234

khanich I did put the link to Daniel Stone message in my last message before explain how hard the hands are in fact tied when someone does this stupidity. Us with personal archives of the project mailing list can compare the current public record of the mailing list to our personal archive and see messages up to 14 day before that Friday that are in fact illegal and are in fact death threats that have been removed. Yes one major reasons why that issue was closed was the illegal miss behaviour.

Reality here you do something wrong under just Code of Conduct you have to be told what you have done wrong. If you have stepped across into illegal you can be straight up banned. This did happen with freedesktop where the ones who did the death threats was not just banned from the mailing list they were also banned from the gitlab and other freedesktop controlled forums as well has having those messages removed from the public record that does not mean removed from everyone personal archives.

The reality here is quite a number of the people banned cannot be unbanned because what they did is illegal. Yes illegal is very different to just breaking CoC. CoC you could get a warning be able to dispute the ban.... Illegal its one strike and you are out with no requirement for Daniel or anyone else having to explain to you what you have done wrong. Remember a individual is not as important as the project when it comes to death threats or other equally illegal the correct answer to protect the person is straight up ban the person who did it. You don't have the option to let them attempt to justify their way out.

GStreamer-based codec support that the pulseaudio maintainers were asking for is not a mistake either. Think about if Qualcomm with aptX decides to throw their patent weight around. A Gstreamer based codec can be added by the end user without having to rebuild pulseaudio/pipewire. Remember with Mp3 how for while if you were in particular countries with the mp3 patents applied you could buy a gstreamer codec of mp3. Some of the work the pulseaudio maintainers were asking for was that they were stepping back and seeing the bigger picture like the legal risk from Qualcomm. I will say that they were not very good at explaining pali way they were demanding before merge different features had to be implement and pali miss took some of this as they were just trying to make him do a lot more work. Yes it was a lot more work but there are legal issues that do come a pain in the but as well. Lot of the high level project maintainers around have access to a formal legal team this does lead to a few cases where something that see as a common sense must be done alteration to a patch without needing to be explained being miss understood as them being asses asking for a lot more work. Yes the patent risk and what has to be done to provide mitigation to patent risk is something a normal person submitting code is not going to consider but lead maintainer of pulseaudio is going to.

I see this complete problem as multi levels of communication failure. Some communication failure is from pali some communication failure from the pulseaudio maintainers themselves not explaining why they were asking for particular changes to be done to the patch because they were thinking this is a common sense change from their point of view and with total failures to communicate properly being all the foolish ones who did death threats. Yes pali going into bat for those who did the death threats is a really bad move those are foolish people who need to suffer from their mistake.

There is a old saying I like. "Common sense is not that common." This is warning. What you think is common sense may not be what another person thinks is common sense. Yes this also lines up with another saying "Never ASSUME, because when you ASSUME, you make an ASS of U and ME." The reality is everyone in this case has assumed different things that are not fact with the result has everyone as turned into their own unique form of ass-hole leading to communication breakdown. Yes some turned into illegal ass-holes.

[khanich]

oiaohm So, when somebody does a death threat, you are not allowed to leave a message after deleting these messages which is like "deleted death threat"?

Also, in the patch which was merged and based upon Pali's work, why was his Copyright notice removed?

[oiaohm]

oiaohm So, when somebody does a death threat, you are not allowed to leave a message after deleting these messages which is like "deleted death threat"?

That is in fact correct for the countries that the freedesktop servers are in. Those countries don't allow a 1 to 1 relationship between death threat removal. The best you you are allowed is what was in the gitlab saying on X day a clean up was done. This is the law is a ass.

Also, in the patch which was merged and based upon Pali's work, why was his Copyright notice removed?

I am not saying this was right. A person is likely to make that legal mistake when they see X person is banned. Asking for Pali copyright notice to be put back would be perfectly valid to give him credit he deserves but there is also the problem that Pali has also problem that Pali has said he will not support the code. The freeaptx fork does still contain Pali copyright and really the patch into pulseaudio should have kept at least some of Pali copyright.

khanich there is a horrible legal precedent where it legal to remove a person name from copyright as long as the work remains under the same license terms. Its something people don't consider. Yes it legal possible to remove Pali name and legally required if you obey a particular legal precedent. Is it morally right to-do so I don't believe so. Is it recommend to do so if you want to mend the bridges in the future absolutely not.

The legal precedent Pali triggered by saying he would not answer any questions from anyone involved with freedesktop it now comes freedesktop responsibility to make sure he did not get contacted by people he did not wish to talk to where possible. So Pali indirectly asked for his name to be deleted off his copyrighted work by that action so parties he had requested not to talk to him would not. Of course that name delete does not mean the terms of the license can be changed.

khanich when this stuff happens a stack of legal precedents and legal requirements trigger. Please note legal precedents a party could possible disobey with a count case required to sort out if the precedent is valid or not that name on copyright. Legal requirements are like the death threat handing where actions are legal to be taken against you without you going to court and you would have to go to court to get those actions reversed and if you fail to get those actions reversed face even worse actions.
When even these thing happen they turn into a stack of ass-holes all around. The law is one of the ass-holes in the mix that is not helping. Most people are thinking what they consider morally right not what the law requires or says should happen by precedent.

"Never ASSUME, because when you ASSUME, you make an ASS of U and ME." << In these messes this comes very critical. Big thing never ASSUME that someone action is wrong without checking out completely is a big thing in these cases. The copyright holders name removal is not wrong in all cases and the removal death threat messages without notice is not wrong either by law precedents. Yes a lot of people incorrect assume that its always illegal to remove the copyright holders name or that you can put up notices with illegal items removed that are both not in fact backed by law.

There are a lot of illegal content take down other than death threats that you are not legally allowed to put up notices why it has been removed or what it was.

The stuff done on the pulseaudio side is legally right. Of course legally right does not mean morally right. I hate seeing these mess because people on different sides always end up believing they are in the right when in reality no one is acting what everyone would call 100 percent right. Yes you always end up with at least one person asking for something that just cannot be done.

Unfortunate in this case Pali is asking for something that just legally cannot be done that is unban everyone who complained about what was happening with his patch set as some of those people went purely illegal. Yes something to be aware of is the illegal actions are also breach of CoC as well. So you cannot just let everyone in who has breached the CoC because those who have done illegal actions also broke the CoC as well cannot be let back legally.

You can think of this as two math sets. CoC is the big broad set of actions of interactions forbin by the project but inside this big broad set there is a small set that are illegal under law.

The horrible part here is Pali terms in his Readme to resolve this problem the freedesktop group cannot legally do. Pali has effectively created a problem that only he can solve. Part of solving the problem would be accepting that some of those banned went well and truly over the line into illegal so cannot be unbanned. Like asking for those that only broke the terms of the CoC and not the law to be unbanned in his defence would in fact be possible. Messes like this you always have to remember a person actions can be limited by law and you cannot request the other party does something counter to what the law mandates.

[khanich]

Yeah, the law can be one heck of a mess, especially if you go international. Which gives me actually a question (although off-topic): What would you do if the law of one country states that you MUST do something while another FORBIDS you to do this?
This question is because here in Germany our constitutional court ruled the following this week on a case about Facebook (summarized): if you sanction people for breaking a Code of Conduct but not for breaking a (german) law (obviously only counts if the person is german), you must inform them afterwards why. If you even ban them, you must inform them beforehand AND give them the opportunity to explain themselves. (Both cases are about legal things according to german law, but may be illegal in other countries.)
Here a link to that (if you can't read german, the google-translated version (yes, Google Translate can translate whole websites) is ok): https://www.br.de/nachrichten/netzwe...warnen,SeYROsf

Also, did you ban the ones who did NOT do something illegal also permanently?

But back to Copyright: I don't think you should ever remove that because otherwise you are going to need to know where the person comes from because that may be straight up never allowed. For example here in Germany the author ALWAYS has the Copyright (but not necessarily the economic rights, e.g. if hired). Furthermore you CAN'T transfer or give up Copyright, even if you want to. This means you can't put stuff into public domain (except by dying and then waiting for it to run out), nor give the Copyright to somebody else. This btw means that you can't contribute to projects which require you to transfer your Copyright to them (like a lot of GNU projects).

The way our law is structured has actually another interesting side effect which I better explain by example: Let's say you are an artist, 25 years old and sell a picture for 20€ to somebody because you need money. Forward 30 years, you are know a very successful and well-known artist. The painting you sold for 20€ is know 20000€ worth because you are so well-known. The owner now decides to sell it for 20000€. You still have the right to get a cut of the (20000e - 20€ =) 19980€.

[oiaohm]

I have extreme doubts about death threats, I'd really like to see proof of that.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulse...27#note_728234

Really this is as good as I give you on it. two reasons.
1) He did a really good job of clean up. Include making sure all the mirrors of the mailing list also removed like they would remove spam garbage and archive sites being informed to nuke out of existence.
2) Its illegal to republish death threats.

Only way you could see it would be go to someone who was maintaining a archive before they were removed and that person is willing to let you look. Please note there are legal risks to letting person look at death threats.

Hm, alright, thanks for the info. That makes sense now.

Honestly though, companies can fuck off asking independent maintainers to do large amounts of work for free. I'm not going to do shit for free, those rich bastards at the top can pay me the same 150,000 USD annual salary if they want people to do major amounts of work.

They'll happily take your work for free, but won't do crap for you at the end.

The reality is you can say no doing something with while not being abusive about it. Yes you can ask if a person is willing to-do something far more nicely than what the maintainer did. Like he could have been like we need the gstreamer feature due to this patent risk are you willing to-do or at least willing to let a assigned developer work on it.

Something to remember not all cases can a company in fact employ particular people. Like the way I wrote that is not ideal I know.
Sandy think about this problem you are the company maintainer you need to know
1) if person is working on the feature you need so you do not double assign work. Remember with openaptx with just a submit that does not include what is on that developers road map.
2) if you do assign a paid person to assist as in do like 99% of the work if the person who did the work first is going to take offence to this.
3) Legalities.

The number 3 is the big difference. The company people will have proper legal team. That legal team means they see problems others don't. Like straight dynamic loader of the library without the gstreamer over head seams to make sense. But this means that bluez would have the qualcomm feature as a build option. As a built option qualcomm might cause problems with patents. With the MP3 it was proven in court that gstreamer code splitting gives enough legal isolation.

Reality is you don't want companies with patents disrupting your end users.

When you read over it all its bad communication all round. The maintainer not describing why he asking for gstreamer support clearly. The maintainers wording for the request for gstreamer support is "would it be possible" for gstreamer support. This has been horrible language habit of the maintainer that people who know him will respond yes but I don't have the time to-do it and he will then offer to assign paid developer to-do work. Please note "would it be possible" was not in " but its the common bit of text the maintainer users.

We don't have standard for how to respond to patches in the open source world to say "we need X feature can you do it yes/no if you cannot will you let someone work on the code yes/no and can the first answer no change if you are offered money/employment todo it".

This does lead to about once ever 5-10 years this death spiral of failed communication in the open source world. Most of time everyone wakes up and stops before crashing into the ground. The openaptx case its nicely impacted in the ground. How to get it back from there not simple.