Re: Proposed Module for GNOME 2.9: GNOME War Pad -- Questions

[Callum McKenzie <callum physics otago ac nz>]

On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 18:37 -0300, Lucas Di Pentima wrote:
> I understand, that was my doubt I was having...Well, I'll look for 
> another way to distribute my software :-) thanks for your answer.
What Heretik wrote is correct. I am not accepting any more games at the
moment due to time and space considerations. The need to use a third-
party game server (free or otherwise) is also a problem since as
distributed it would be unplayable (you make the requirement clear on
your website, but if it found by a user as part of the gnome-games
bundle they won't know this).

Having said that, there is a better reason not to include GNOME War Pad:
It doesn't need to be. You have a great website, you have advertised it
well (I have encountered it before through several different sources)
and it appears to be going well. I don't think adding it to gnome-games
is going to enhance GNOME War Pad. What were you hoping to get out of
being part of gnome-games ?

> Now the doubt you've created me is this: GNOME won't accept any new game 
> because of the package's size? I think this is terrible, not allowing 
> more games because of someone is overloaded woth work, it's simply not 
> scalable, why not split gnome-games in different singular packages? 
> maintained by different people? it's just an idea.
gnome-games is not meant to be a collection of every game written using
the GNOME framework. It is meant to be a small collection of toys to
show off GNOME's features and technology. Also, all desktops require a
solitaire game :).

There are a lot of good games out there that no one knows about (yours
is not one of those) and, in general, we don't do a lot to promote non-
core GNOME products. The fifth-toe software collection is a classic
example of this. It was meant to be a collection of all those great non-
core GNOME applications (like gnumeric and abiword) but no one ever
promoted it beyond putting up a website. Eugenia's gnomefiles.org looks
like being a good replacement, a sort of GNOME-specific freshmeat.net. 
There is also the Linux Game Tome (happypenguin.org) for promoting Linux
games in general (but you already know about these).

Remember GNOME is more than just the core set of software. It is all the
other things, like gnumeric, like GNOME War Pad, like monkey bubble,
like all the other GNOME-based games.

If you just feel distant from the core group of hackers and the decision
making process (which is a reasonable feeling) then the way to get
involved is to be active with ideas on mailing lists like desktop-devel,
join the GNOME Foundation, supply patches for cool hacks you have made,
complain about bits of the API you don't like. It is a lot easier than
you think to be involved.

 - Callum