Re: [Anygui-devel] Disgruntled would-be user
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From: Terry H. <ha...@an...> - 2004-04-10 15:10:42
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On Friday 09 April 2004 06:51 pm, Magnus Lie Hetland wrote: > Laura Creighton <la...@st...>: > > MLH, what you have demonstrated, at worst-best is the courage to > > fail. > > Or just youthful exuberance and enthusiasm... or something ;) > > > You think that this is a still live project, and I think that it has > > failed, > > Well... I think it deserves the necessary work to get a 0.2 release > out the door -- all the work that went into the new architecture ought > to be able to crawl out of CVS. > > On the other hand: The project does not seem as "live" as it did to me > originally. I guess one of the reasons I'm still motivated to work on > it is guilt about the sort of issues raised by our complaining > would-be user here. Not sure whether getting a release will really > help anyone there, though. Hmm. "Failure" of an open-source project is not a clear-cut process, almost by definition. Consider: Joseph Strout wrote "Python Universe Builder" (PUB) (in about 1996), then he got a job, got interested in MUDs instead of interactive fiction, and lost interest. No one had contributed significantly to his project, and it "died". Failed or Not? Then I started "The Light Princess" at SF, because somebody had told me that open-source games had crappy graphics and stories because *creative types WOULD NOT OPEN-SOURCE their work*. I took that as a challenge, and I was, in a matter of months able to locate four character artists, 3-D environment artists, a good public-domain story, and even someone who had previously written a stage-adaptation of the same story. I two musicians, and even a few voice actors willing to give the project a try. But we had no game engine, and not enough PROGRAMMERS intersted in the project. So, in my attempt to salvage this situation, I created a separate game engine project "Automanga" and discovered Strout's PUB. After finding out its status, I adopted it and made it into the Py-Universe SF project in 2000. That wasn't enough, I didn't really have the skill to write a game engine all by myself, there weren't enough people interested in finishing the engine, *I* got a job, and I had to announce that, basically, "The Light Princess" and "Automanga" were dead projects. Naturally, I stopped working on Py-Universe too, since I no longer needed it. Failed or Not? Py-Universe stayed dead for about 2-years. The only thing on the mailing list was spam, and I had accidentally bumped myself off of it. But I didn't notice because there was so little traffic. In 2003, someone new got interested in Py-Universe and spent about 6 months trying to get hold of me because of my SNAFU with the mail. I only found out about it because they were having a discussion about forking the project, and someone thought to CC me! Anyway, this guy sent me some very heated emails and I apologized profusely and fixed him up as a developer on the site, created a Wiki and some other stuff so they could keep working, even IF I fell out of the loop again, which I thought was a useful guarantee. Now, the Py-Universe project is alive again in 2004 -- with about SEVEN developers and a new modularized, component architecture rewrite underway. I'm not doing very much of the work (just making sure the website keeps working), but I have been really impressed with this. I'm waffling over whether to become more active, or just ask this new guy to be the maintainer. This project is EIGHT years old. And it's only been active for about 2 or 3 of those. Yet, at present, it's basically a healthy project. All I'm saying is, you never know. Maybe the time hasn't come yet, or the critical developer interest isn't there. Or you just have too many other commitments, but all of that is subject to change. And stuff can sit dead for ages and then revive in days. This isn't really because it's *open-source*, but because it's being done by *amateurs* (even if the amateurs also program on their day-jobs). Some of the participants may be supported by their employers to work on open-source projects -- but those are the lucky ones. Most of us are just involved because we love working on it. And those interests and priorities will naturally change. Even the "Light Princess" project *might* wake up again in some form -- since I left it for dead, others have written game engines like Cog (Py-Game), that might work or be adapted to work for it, and the Py-Universe's new design directions might help, too. But I've got way too much on my plate to deal with it now. So don't beat yourself up over it. If you get a "0.2 release" that would be awesome -- any time you can close things up to a point where the code can be installed and runs, you greatly increase the chance that some passerby will pick it up and try it out. But some people will pick it up anyway. Sometimes a project will be obsolete (for awhile I thought that Automanga was redundant with Animatronik (http://www.animatronik.org), the only reason it's not is because the latter was never released either ;-) ). I think about 80-90% of the projects at SF are in this kind of state of inactivity. Things may be worse (at least for American programmers), because lately they're all scrambling for employment (me too), but things will pick up again. It's just a matter of time. Hoping this is encouraging, Terry -- Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com ) Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com |