Re: [VANILLA-LIST:3160] Developers Must Play

[Dave Ahn <ahn@vec.wfubmc.edu>]

On Tue, May 09, 2000 at 04:54:42PM +1000, James Cameron wrote:
> I'm starting to get the impression that some of the decisions we have
> been making for the Netrek community as developers have not always been
> in the interest of growing the community.  What do others think?

I think that's true.  But I also believe that nothing we have done has
had a proactively negative impact, either.  We have always paid very
little attention towards some of the highest priority needs.

On Tue, May 09, 2000 at 09:19:54AM -0400, Jeffrey Nowakowski wrote:
> 
> The problem is people will work on what they consider interesting.
> That always isn't what is best for Netrek, but I don't see how you
> change that.

This is also true.  Because I have a very limited amount of time to
dedicated towards Netrek, I prioritize things based on how interesting
they are to me.  For example, it's more likely that I would add a new
scoring system than to tackle some things in the PROJECTS file even
if the scoring system would be a lot more work.

> I think the single biggest problem we face is the number of forked
> development efforts going on with the clients.  The ideal would be a
> single client that worked on both Unix and Windows, with smooth
> graphics and an intelligent user interface.  Instead we have Paradise
> (Unix only, Trent's version non-open source), COW (works on both
> Windows and Unix, not sure how well on Windows), Netrek1999 (Windows
> only), a Java client (devolopment ceased), BRMH (Unix only), Ted
> Turner (Unix only?), and other various un-released projects.

I agree.  Over the last 6 months or so, I have tried to pull the
developers together at SourceForge.  Among the numerous benefits I
listed was the pitch that eventually I wanted to see a consolidation of
the source code so that there would be one single client and one single
server that shared some common base code.  Well, we've made a partial
move to SF, but very few of the ideas and benefits have been realized.
That's too bad.

Aside from the fragmented development issues, one critical thing has
always been at the top of the TODO list: good documentation.  Part of
this is my fault for not dedicating the time to finish what I originally
started.  The player's guide at www.netrek.org has been work-in-progress
for the last 3-4 years.  But I have also asked for help from the community
with little response.

> Right now I'm working on improving cambot support in COW.  But what
> about all the other clients?  I'm not going to port my changes to
> them.

There are other issues with merging the clients.  Many people may prefer
to use older clients.  If we stop maintaining them, someone else will
step up to keep them going.  Look at what happened with BRMH.  Instead
of telling people to switch to COW, we simply fixed the bugs and released
new binaries.  And not all the maintainers may even want to merge their
clients.

-- 
Dave Ahn <ahn@vec.wfubmc.edu>        |  "When you were born, you cried and the
                                     |  world rejoiced.  Try to live your life
Virtual Endoscopy Center             |  so that when you die, you will rejoice
Wake Forest Univ. School of Medicine |  and the world will cry."  -1/2 jj^2