I hoped that the tone of that post was making reasonably clear how I meant that. In case it did not:
I can’t teach most of the people here much about colour science stuff. I’m reasonably good with engineering maths, parametric geometry, understanding coupled problems, and putting complicated stuff into software for end users. I’ve delivered more than one functionality that started out as an exercise in wagging the dog for users, until I worked out where they were, where they were going, and therefore, which of the screws I needed to expose to keep the bits fixed that they needed fixed and let them change the bits that need to be changed. I’ve also taught at uni a few years. Making weird shit logical has been part of my job for about 5 years, and finding ways to explain stuff to people for whom the regular explanation did not work[*]. I would like to apply these things.
So I fully expect (actually hope!) to learn a lecture or three about the colour process and DT’s pipeline and inner logistics here. I cannot pretend that I knew a terrible lot in that regard, but I do think I can contribute some of the other stuff I do know – but that is only going to work if we can have sufficient respect for each other’s abilities and awareness of our own weaknesses.
I know you guys have put a lot of effort into DT, and I won’t pretend that I could have done that, or even known to think about doing that. But if you look around here, there are two kinds of people: Those who “get” filmic and those who don’t. The path from one to the other seems very narrow, and I feel that myself. I’m trying to do what the classical recommended solution to difficulties with open source software is: help improve it rather than complain.
I’m aware that I’m not always the perfect diplomat but neither is Aurelien (which he knows), but that should not be a requirement (although it’s sure nice to try sometimes). I’d suggest we all give each other the benefit of the doubt. It’s not possible to improve something without also critiquing it, but I wouldn’t be trying if I thought that it was crap.
[*]»If you can’t explain something to a first-year student, you haven’t really understood« (Richard Feynman). I don’t actually completely agree with that, but I’ve experienced first-hand, often enough, that actively trying to explain something in better and different ways does wonders.