[Scummvm-devel] The Situation (omnious music..)

[Max Horn]

Yo folks, I am throwing in my two cents now, too.

Overall, I must say, I can understand why some people are a bit upset: 
we had indeed a bad case of lack of communication. That's very bad for 
a big project.

However, I am also very disappointed about the extremely emotional 
arguments going around. I think we are all capable programmers who 
should be capable of clear logical thoughts... let's try to all calm 
down a little, step back a step, and think a bit about this. Then think 
a bit more... consider not only your stance, but also try to understand 
the others here and ask yourself why they might react like they do... 
maybe not to annoy you, but rather because they, too, feel (too?) 
emotional about this matter, just maybe in another way...

[...]

Am 06.05.2004 um 09:48 schrieb James 'Ender' Brown:

[...]

> Since people on the list and channel cannot seem to behave civilly,

I found the discussion on the list mostly OK (although some people did 
react a bit too emotional, IMO). But reading through the IRC logs, I am 
also indeed a bit shocked about the tone going on there... dear. This 
is nothing changing the core of your lives, folks, unlike emacs vs. vi, 
so let's calm it down a bit more ;-)

[...]

>
> 	* So far, one former team member has decided to not hang around in the
> channel due to 'disagreements with ScummVMs policy'

Interesting. You know, I didn't know that, nor who it was, but my 
immediate reaction was to think of one specific person which I thought 
would fit with that pattern of behavior. And reading through the 
channel logs, I was dead right. No comments... :-)


> . I would be
> interested to know what policy that is. Our only publically-expressed
> policies are:
> 		- A game has to be an adventure. Nobody said PURE adventure. This 
> has,
> however, generally been understood to mean point-and-click and is
> reflected as such on our website and documentation.

Maybe we should write down those policies explicitly. And maybe we 
should discuss whether we want to turn this into explicitly only 
supporting 2D point-and-click adventures (or the opposite, i.e. 
explicitly make it broader... I prefer the former, but certainly do not 
want to announce the result of a discussion before it has begun :-).

> 		- No warez
> 		- We won't RE on request but are more than willing to accept other
> engines into the project on a case-by-case basis. See below:

[...]

> 	* Also, I have had at least one person tell me flat out that they're
> considering leaving the team. And several have implied it. Note that 
> not
> all of them were opposed to AW, some have suggested leaving if it's
> -removed-.

Personally, I find such reactions understandable (because I had such 
reactions myself in the past), yet very pointless and harmful (harmful 
to yourself more than for the rest). Before affected people scream and 
shout at me now, don't forget, I admit to having such stupid ideas 
myself in the past :-).

My personal stance (based on experiences from other (big) projects) is 
that if somebody really wants to leave because of something like this, 
maybe it's best for all, on the long run... I don't feel like letting 
myself be blackmailed about this issue (and IMO these threats are 
nothing else). If you want things changed, stay and work with us on a 
solution. Don't just throw the towel. But if you just want to hurt us 
by taking away your valuable resources (knowledge, skill, etc), 
well.... it's sad for all. But on the end of the day, we will still go 
on, without them.

I was not too happy when sky was added initially. (I never liked the 
simon support either, but it was added before I joined the project). 
But then I thought about it, and fact is, nothing bad was caused by it 
to me; my work was essentially untouched. To the contrary, having more 
engines was a good test to our infrastructure.

Boiled down, the only thing that was negative about this (and other 
engines added) for me personally, was a change of focus of the project; 
implying that I had to reconsider whether I still identified with the 
project. Life is about change, though, so I adapted. If the changes get 
too big, maybe I won't adapt anymore. Understandable.

However, let's try to be honest to ourselves, and to the other team 
members, and let's try to speak about our true reasons why we support 
adding an engine, or why we oppose it... I believe that in most cases, 
the technical arguments brought up are just there to hide your true 
intentions... "bloat" ? We have ways around that. "Using OSystem is 
nice"? True, but this could also be solved by many other existing 
backend systems (like SDL), or we could split the OSystem framework 
into a separate project; or you could simply use it, but copy it for 
your project (this code is GPL, after all). I could go on.

None of these arguments really imply that awe must, or must not, be 
part of OSystem. Both ways will work well. The true reasons are others, 
I believe. Like, being angry about not even being asked before the 
merger (very understandable reaction!). Being angry because your work 
is rejected by the others (also very understandable). I could go on.

It's extremely hard to find out what your own personal true intentions 
are. In fact, a whole business branch exists which tries to help people 
find out what they really want and think. So it's hard, but let's try 
it anyway...

Did I like adding sky, sword1, sword2, fotaq, saga, kyra, awe? Heck no! 
I most certainly didn't !
Did it hurt me?   Heck no! I don't have to deal with them in my daily 
life anyway.
Do I prefer that ScummVM stays focused? Sure. I just don't know exactly 
what its focus is, or will be. Remember, Linux started out with a very 
different focus, too. So did MAME. Where are they today? Was it a bad 
thing which happened to them? Was it a good thing? People's opinions 
will vary, I am sure :-)
So, do I think awe should be added/kept?  See above. I am not a friend 
of it. But I won't die either way. Life goes on.

[...]

> I now see ScummVM has having the following goals:
>
> #1) To attempt to resurrect classic adventure games, support them
> cross-platform and attempt their freeware release if possible.
> #2) To learn from the attempt.
> #3) To be a part of the retrogaming adventure community.
> #4) To be **FUN!!**, both to use AND develop.

Yeah, my stance, too. Of course, this doesn't help us much in this 
matter... Since
a) People disagree about the definition of "classic adventure games"
b) If we add/keep awe, rule 4 is broken for some
c) If we remove awe, rule 4 is broken for some other

<sigh>.

Maybe it is indeed time to fan out into multiple projects... One which 
deals with the OSystem stuff (and the rest of the infrastructure, so: 
backends/, common/, graphics/, gui/, sound/). And then ScummVM 
(=AdventureVM... ), and residual, and awe, and anything else which 
might want to make use of it... of course that would decouple 
development of the backends from the frontend, meaning slightly less 
flexibility... OTOH, having "stable" release of the backend stuff to 
work against might indeed have its very own advantages... projects 
would use "OSystem 1.0.4" or "OSystem 1.2.1" etc..

Ah well. I bet I'll get a lot of people immediately rejecting this 
idea, and a lot of other people hailing it as the one true way :-).


>
> So, can we please all just get along? :)
>
I am afraid, we are humans, which are known to have this bad habit of 
making arguments out of thin air. Alas, we can try :-)


Cheers,

Max