I should have bolded some and expanded a bit, but I was in a rush out the door, my appologies. Most of my recent bitterness over some open source developers comes from the ffmpeg drama. The recent "coupe" is completely over the top, unprofessional, and does more harm then good because some of the developers feel the need to just flame people badly in public instead of rationally trying to solve an issue. These are some extremely talented programmers that have done some amazing things, but they also let even little things like top posting vs bottom posting get in the way of having new contributors approach the project and help out. It's just frustrating to see.

My comparison to extreme evangelicals comes from a similar angle where people take the base cause to such an extreme that they do more harm then good. In no way was meant as an insult to you John, or any of the other religious participants in these boards. It's more aimed at the people who I'm used to seeing in the news due to my time in Colorado Springs, the ones so busy trying to tell other people how to live that they end up somehow forgetting what they preach. John, I have great respect for you because you seem to not only believe in what you do strongly, but you also have made a major life choice to move to where you now reside to help make a difference in that area.

On the good side of open source, I'm extremely pleased with the Mozilla folks. I've been working very closely with several of their engineers on the Socorro project, and they all have a great mindset, one that to me speak highly of the benefits of the open source mentality.

And Mark, none of the frustration is directed towards you either. I definitely haven't seen any indication from your posts here, or your postings elsewhere that would ever have me lump you in with the types of people I see causing the drama in the ffmpeg community.