Re: Disgruntled would-be user

On Friday 09 April 2004 06:51 pm, Magnus Lie Hetland wrote:
> Laura Creighton <[email protected]>:
> > 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



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