Re: Directed Development

[Ian Peters <itp helixcode com>]

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

On Thu, Aug 03, 2000 at 03:45:33PM -0400, Poletti, Don wrote:
> One of the thing about gnome that I don't like
> is the selection of games (although not limited to that
> software category). I think the collection has too many
> games that don't appeal to many people IMO. I think
> this is because gnome and helix just gather what is out
> there and package it. The result is random collection of games.

A better way to look at it is, the games we distribute are the ones
that were written and submitted, and thus were the games that the
authors decided they wanted to write.

> What I think would be better is if gnome decided that its
> game package should contain x,y,z. For instance lets say 
> the power that be decide that the following would make a nice
> game package, items in () are for instance.
> 
> 2-3 card games, (solitaire, hearts, blackjack)
> 1-2 gambling games (slots, casino games)
> 3+ classic games (backgammon, chess, checkers)
> 1 rpg game  (Gnome Hack)
> 2 arcade like games (Tetris, asteroids)
> 
> Then once the list is made a group is form to fulfill the need.

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 also think it would be nice if the games were packaged in smaller
> packages according to category. So I would only install card games
> if that is what I wanted.
> 
> I some of the existing games that are not of general appeal of
> are more of one time joke than game (xbill comes to mind) could
> be in a separate package.

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.

> 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.

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'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.  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.  They're just games.  ;)

-- 
Ian Peters
itp@helixcode.com