[Scummvm-devel] Understaffing (Was: What is happening to the ScummVM team?)

Max Horn max at quendi.de
Fri Feb 13 02:48:55 CET 2009


Hi there,


regarding release / code quality: I concur, things seem to have gone  
downhill when it comes to testing coverage, code/release quality, and  
also availability of ports / testing of ports before the release.

In short, the reason for that seems to be understaffing / lack of time  
of people.


It starts at the top: The two team leads (eugene and me) are super- 
busy with life outside ScummVM, leading to a certain regretable lack  
in leadership. And in bug triage. It might be nice to add 1-2 new  
people to the head of ScummVM. We'd need somebody very active and able  
to fill in the leadership role. Management is understaffed resp.  
existing staff lacks time.

It continues with engine maintanance: Not all our engines are being  
very actively maintained. Right now, there is *nobody* assigned to BS1  
(though I'd hope that the engine is stable enough to work well  
anyway). Regarding e.g. the MM v2 bugs: 1-2 years ago I probably would  
have already fixed those, as it is, I don't have time (other things  
have higher priority for me) to even start debugging them. There are  
some other people actively working on SCUMM, luckily, but I am not  
sure how interested/equipped they are in/for fixing bugs in MM...  The  
engine teams are understaffed resp. existing staff lacks time.

It leads (but doesn't stop at) ports, where once again some ports  
won't make it, for other ports we have heard little to nothing from  
their porters. We certainly could stand getting some new people aboard  
here! People like Chrilith, Neil, Kostas, etc. are working alone on  
their ports, and the testing alone puts a huge burden on them. Port  
teams are understaffed resp. existing staff lacks time.


I'll reply to the other point in another mail, as this is IMHO getting  
difficult to track otherwise. :-)


Cheers,
Max




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