Re: Splitting GNOME Games

[Robert Ancell <robert ancell gmail com>]

On 31 October 2011 20:46, Jason D. Clinton <me jasonclinton com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 04:18, Jordi Mas <jmas softcatala org> wrote:
>> Until now, we have been restricting the number of games in GNOME Games
>> package telling new game developers that their games cannot be included.
>
> Yes, based on the language and GNOME-iness of the proposal.
>
> There are no more "official" GNOME applications GNOME Games is no
> longer an official app. That will even more so be the case after we
> complete the split.
>
> As always, anyone is welcome to have their project (game or otherwise)
> hosted on GNOME git, Bugzilla and i18n infrastructure. As long as you
> follow the release process, people will translate and ship it.
>

What I'm thinking about here is we have two things, a) the gnome-games
module and b) the GNOME Games team.  I think we're all in agreement
the former will no longer exist (it was really just a convenience
rather than having separate modules), but I'd like to keep the latter
around.

What I'd like to see the GNOME Games team doing:
- Maintaining a fixed number of games based on our resourcing.
- Picking a standard technology (Vala+GTK+Clutter).
- Having well defined requirements for bringing in new games.
- Dropping games if they don't meet the requirements at the end of the
unstable cycle (i.e. not making a stable release).  [1]
- Actively cycling in new games (at least one per cycle?)
- Being a leader in GNOME technology (being first to get GMenu support
and being a testing ground for other GNOME projects).
- Encouraging new developers into the project by:
  - Actively mentoring students (GSOC, GHOP) to make fixes to the
games (Clutter migration, Telepathy integration)
  - Encouraging new developers who may have a game idea they want to
work on.  If their game meets the requirements, it's better than any
of the maintained games, and the developer can make a 2 cycle
commitment then bring it in. [2]
- Having these rules written down and reviewed at the start of each
unstable cycle.

I'm happy to step up to being a maintainer to make this happen.

[1] Note dropped games just don't have any more stable releases, and
are able to be maintained by people outside the GNOME Games team
[2] We don't mind if they move on after that, and ideally they may
move onto more important GNOME projects.