Now, there are mailing list posts like this one which say “it’ll be ready when it’s ready” and calling for the use who dared venture forth with the question (of when the next rc or release might be forthcoming) to be the release manager. I mean, look, I understand that these guys are doing a lot of hard work developing MPlayer and it is, after all, a pretty good product by open source standards (I mean, it has some actual documentation for one thing) BUT geez, if you’re not going to actually release 1.0 in some reasonable timeline then why have “release candidates”? Was -rc2 so bad that it can’t be called 1.0? (I mean, that is the point of a “release candidate” right? It is the candidate for the release, yes?) And if -rc2 has problems, wouldn’t it be prudent to at least do another release candidate, i.e. rc3?

Sigh. I guess I’m complaining not so much about the absence of MPlayer 1.0 (although I would certainly like it to arrive) but the fact that these “release candiates” exist and did so for so long without any actual release occurring. I mean, you shouldn’t have a release candidate if you’re not planning (or able) to do an actual release – it kind of gives the wrong impression. (Let’s be clear. The developers aren’t at fault, at least, not most of them. I’m just kind of irked at whoever had the bright idea to bundle a tarball and call it “Mplayer 1.0pre1” in the first place…)