Bleh.

I've seen quite a few threads recently where people advocate one codec over another, selectively quoting "facts" (prejudice?) which support their preferred codec, ignoring or dismissing anything which doesn't fit in with their view of the universe.

Can someone please explain software zealotry to me? I like using MPC, and my web browser of choice (at the moment) is Mozilla. I personally have no need for Ogg Vorbis whatsoever (it has neither MP3's compatibility nor Musepack's ultimate quality) but I have nothing against it on principle, and if I decide at some point that Ogg Vorbis or Opera or even IE suits me better, I'll switch without any regrets or guilt whatsoever. I fully accept that other people may have different opinions, needs or preferences, and that's fine, but, to quote a much-respected developer, "I couldn't give a rat's ass."

I used Opera until version 7 came out, and then I decided I liked Mozilla 1.3 better. I've still got all the major browsers installed, and I may just change my mind again. Can you handle that, you open-source zealots?

Why do people form an irrational attachment to software, to the extent that they seem to take personal offence if someone advocates an alternative?

Now I'm going to go and lie in a darkened room. Cheers.

Well, there's a variety of reasons. For one, there's some personal advantage -- if is personally like Ogg Vorbis or MPC, it's to my benefit to get as many other people as possible to like and use it as well, in order to increase the software and hardware support available for my chosen format, which will never happen if everyone either keeps using MP3 or chooses someone other than what I prefer.

As for open source, I personally prefer it because it offers me maximum flexibility. If I want to change something, I can do so. Now certainly no one has to release their software under an open source license, but given a choice, I'll prefer those who do. Non-open-source software may not seem a big deal most of the time, but many times it's a gigantic pain in the ass. A lot of CS research time is wasted reimplementing algorithms and ideas presented in journal articles because the person who initially implemented them didn't release their source code (sometimes because they wanted to keep it proprietary; sometimes because it was such a horrible mess it wasn't in a releasable state). This tends to retard progress -- if I have an idea for a slight improvement and there were open source code available, I could make the change and see if it works. If it takes me 6 months to reimplement the original procedure just to try out my minor improvement, I won't bother.

You can see this in practice as well -- LAME and Oggenc have benefited greatly from source code availability, which is what allowed some extensive tweaking to take place (the --alt-presets for LAME and the Garf-tuned Oggenc versions, for example). If someone had an idea for a neat improvement, but to try it out had to reimplement an encoder from scratch, it's highly unlikely they'd do so.

This type of behavior is pretty common in many aspects of life, especially in areas where there is competition or some element of the unknown. Think of sports, religion, or politics. People like to hold on to certain ideas with a sort of blind faith, and this can shape and distort the way they see everything in life. The ultimate expression of this is violence and war.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with having opinions and preferences, and even a little patriotism is okay. The difference is that the zealot stops seeing the shades of gray. He sees the world in black and white and considers opinions that differ from his not as avenues of thought to explore but as threatening attacks to his world view. When the zealot debates, it is less likely to be with well formed arguments supporting his opinion and more likely to be personal attacks on the character of his opponent.

My own theory is that at the bottom of the zealots' behavior is the fear that they might actually be wrong. They try to compensate for this fear by becoming more confident, and then aggressive, as though they can bully those who disagree into submission. Convincing others that you are correct becomes more important than actually being correct (because being wrong is okay if the truth is not heard). Next thing you know, children are stepping on landmines.

Or, it might all be as harmless as cheering for your high-school football team...

The fact is that if you use Mozilla, you can't be a zealot - you just know what's best and standard-compatible.
By using it you promote web standards, so it's not zealotry.

Zealoty is fine, as long as you aren't blind to the other alternatives and actually will acknowledge another alternative's good points. What always makes me mad is when someone asks for help with selecting a low-bitrate (for example) for say a portable MP3 cd player that also happens to have WMA and/or MP3PRO on it. You can almost guarentee that someone will say "Ogg Vorbis rulez" within the first few posts or "low-bitrates sux, use Musepack or LAME alt-preset standard" within the first few posts. It just makes me shake my head in disgust.

You see the same thing with the foobar zealots. Just because Peter created foobar because of his experience with Winamp, most foobar users go "winamp sucks" whenever a winamp thread is made, without even realizing that there could quite possibily be a reason why people want to use Winamp. As long as a user is making an educated decision on choosing a format or player, supporting your favorite whatever is all cool with me. Just be prepared to acknowledge what foobar can't do, Ogg Vorbis' relatively lack of maturity even though its quality is quite good, or Musepack's lack of portable support.

<TrN> Chicks need skins man.

please...., this thread was astonishingly reasonable!

don't mess with winamp users, buddy!

But then it wouldn't be zealotry anymore, as being narrow minded characterizes the zealot.

Being a zealot makes things simple and in general it is nice when things are simple (allthough perhaps also less interesting). Most likely there will be others thinking the same way as you do and it's easier to communicate with your new found peers, if you don't have to argue with each other. Just say "blabla is BEST all else is teh suxx!!!!11" and you will get a bunch of positive replies.

The "inverse zealot" is also an interesting phenomenon. Instead of blindly approving of something, he hates something without proper reason. Often the two go hand in hand (for example contra MS and pro Linux), but there are also cases of isolated inverse zealotry, like hating people from a specific country.

this is "the true zealotry" (and most people do it this way): http://toastytech.com/evil/onlyie.html