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

[Kostas Nakos]

Joost Peters wrote:
> Let's hear your thoughts!

Right, so, for starters the point I think Johannes was trying to make is 
that by donning his release manager cap does not mean he has powers 
bestowed onto him to make all ports magically appear at the next 
release. Please note that I'm not interpreting anyone here, just my 
sense of what that specific communication was about: not in any way 
demeaning to the job carried out by the leads which is known, and has 
been verified by the various messages today to be *very* important and 
*very* well done all this time (I think it's good to point that fact out 
to you guys, once in a while).

Second, when a task requires extra resources the leads cannot handle for 
whatever reason I would expect for the team to help out. Since though 
some organizational aspects are not that appealing to many people, I 
find Joost's proposal for gathering volunteers to work on specific tasks 
is very nice and doable. And for the "what if he (the volunteer) doesn't 
do this or that" or "fails to keep the deadline", I say: this is a 
volunteering job, a more relaxed one and hopefully a fun one to keep. 
You can't do it => somebody else steps up. So the motivation is the 
task, the interaction, the taking part thing. For me personally, I would 
be glad & eager to setup a toolchain on the build server. I would offer 
my semi-decent administration skills to set up the machine too, but I 
foresee perhaps one free-of-work weekend until the end of April, so I 
don't want to promise to do something and fail miserably to deliver. But 
I'm here nevertheless.

Third, I'd really like it if Max was to step back up and co-administrate 
with Eugene GSoC again this year (no offense Sven :-) and /if/ we get in 
again this year), if not for any other reason than because he likes it 
too much as I suspect :-) (even the parts with the shouting to the 
students/mentors :-) ). And for what's it worth, I think all mentors did 
help in a self-organizing kind of way the admins these 2 years. 
(reminder: we need to sort out all gsoc stuff this weekend for the 
proposal to be ready in time).

Finally, I think something should be done in the direction Joost was 
talking about in a call for volunteers. Note that it should be *done*. 
We can talk some more on this, but all this talk has to lead somewhere, 
preferably soon. Can we agree on the job positions? What are they? I say 
the webmaster and the build server admin look ok, if they alleviate some 
burden off the leads' shoulders. Can't think of anything else I'd like 
to propose in particular.

And, Joost, please wait a couple of days before you kick everyone in the 
butt again :-P

Best Regards,
Kostas

PS. I am kinda tired, so if anything has slipped my mind I'll be back 
with a followup.