RE: Directed Development

["Poletti, Don" <don poletti comverse-in com>]

> Hi, I'm the GNOME Games maintainer, so I guess I'm a person to respond
> to this.

Thanks is very nice when an official gnome person actually talks
in this forum I see so many topic discussed without the actually
responsible person participating. Not to slight those that do
Miguel and havoc and other do regularly contribute but not
always.

> That's not how free software works.  There are, in this case, no
> powers that be, other than a) the authors of the games, who took the
> time to write them, and b) myself, who decides which games to ship
> (and I am increasingly loathe to add new games to the actual
> gnome-games module, given that so little of what is currently there
> is maintained by anyone other than me).

I know that's not how it works in general which is why I was
suggesting we try something new. But this is not entirely
new Gnome office is similar. They decide that word processor, 
spreadsheet etc are needed. I believe this is how Gnumeric was
started (not exactly but).

> 
> Packaging individual games is something that Debian does, and that
> other distributions could consider.  For myself, managing the
> gnome-games CVS module as separate packages seems like more trouble
> than it's worth.

Well I have a relatively small (6 Gig) hard drive with only 1.5 for
Linux so I'm a little more concerned with space. I also hate cluttered
menus so it would be worth it to me but I can see were its not that
important.

> 
> > I think this would be a good improvement. Filling a need rather than
> > packaging what is currently available.
> 
> Again, I don't think you understand how things like the gnome-games
> get written.  The games do fill a need; each and every one of them
> was voluntarily written by someone who chose to write it, first, and
> only then chose to share it.  So their needs were filled, and they
> also offer you the chance to see if it can fill some of your needs,
> as well.
I do know how they are written but that doesn't mean that the
way it has to be. If you or Miguel or whoever laid out a 
plan I bet people would be willing to help. People work
better when there is a goal (dare I say Vision). Rather than
the current do what ever you like and maybe it'll get included.

> 
> If your needs aren't met, then it may be time to volunteer your time
> to resolve that.  I'd definitely welcome help working on the games,
> especially when it's time to wean them off of imlib for the GNOME 2.0
> platform, etc.  

I guess its time to put my money where my mouth it. My time is 
limited (mortgage kids job) but I would be willing to help but
if its just to port the existing games to gnome 2.0 I will
have less enthusiasm than if we tried to get an overall
plan. Please write me off list and we can talk about how I
can help.

Hopefully if I become a contributor my opinions would
carry more weight. I was hoping there would be a bigger 
discussion about this on the list to see if my view was
more generally held but so far its quiet...too quiet...

> I'd even welcome proposals to sort the current games
> into a few submenus, with patches to gnome-games and gnome-core, if
> necessary, to set up the hierarchy.  
This would be a step in the right direction. 

> I don't propose, however, to
> throw out what we've got to meet an arbitrary goal of a certain
> number of games in certain categories.  
No I think some should be pared or placed into gnome-games2 because
they don't have general appeal or are not meant to play more
than a couple of times for laughs (like xbill).


> They're just games.  ;)

Just games??? Well if you didn't wink I'd think your completely 
off your rocker. Apple made the mistake of underestimating the
role games have in promoting an OS.


> 
> -- 
> Ian Peters
> itp@helixcode.com
>