Jörg Schilling is gone

Posted Oct 12, 2021 3:30 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566)
Parent article: Jörg Schilling is gone

The first comment in the linked thread sums it up: tragic, more than anything.

cdrecord was a necessary piece of software for many people. When I first discovered the cdrkit fork I felt a huge sense of relief at finally being able to use my hardware without being told I'm an idiot using a broken OS. I told myself I'd do better if I ever had software with users.

Times have changed and I'm still stuck using unavoidable software that treats me like an idiot while it mutters under its breath about the OS being broken, but the new stuff has a big marketing budget and gives me a condescending smile and baby-babble error messages instead of insults; it just silently malfunctions and I lose weeks stumbling about blindly in frustration trying to hammer it back into operation.

I don't miss the edginess, but we've lost the honesty.

Jörg Schilling is gone

Posted Oct 27, 2021 5:28 UTC (Wed) by john.carter (guest, #123615) [Link]

In retrospect, much of the pain of the early days centered around painfulness of SCSI and CD formats.

I admire his skill and tenacity in creating something that did battle with various painful low level API's and formats on multiple platforms.... and worked.

Yes, some of his software could be a beast to drive.... but that merely reflected the insane complexity of the devices and formats they were driving.

If modern cd recording software is clean and easy... it's because some of the api's have become standardised and saner, and we're ignoring and not using a vast array of megaconfigurable options in the formats.

If he became a bit cranky about supporting all that... yup, I'd be too.

Rest now Jörg!