Google Summer of Code 2010

[Argh]

OIC.

Given this situation, let's look at what people are saying are the possible reasons, and discuss what could be done, in a practical policy sense.

1. The problem is our association with OTA-based games and content piracy in general.

Policy change required: quit allowing games that violate copyright to operate on the official server; quit promoting them via the website; possibly remove them from the Forums; possibly dis-allow discussions that involve trafficking in, or utilizing, materials that violate copyright.

This is obviously the most controversial thing, but we're out of wiggle room on this issue, and I really don't see much more room for compromise. That said, I really don't see anything like the level of copyright issues with Crystal Space, Wesnoth, etc., and that may be a serious issue, from Google's standpoint, let alone other grantor organizations.

2. The problem is a bad Forum atmosphere, creating the impression that we're not a good community for development.

Policy change required: stricter moderation in general; more emphasis on removing argumentative people from the Forums, should their behaviors not improve; more emphasis on reducing trolling; more emphasis on "keeping the peace" rather than "allowing free discussion"; a "newbie zone" where people who aren't being 100% helpful and nice are told to leave; improvements in documentation overall.

Personally, I think things have improved pretty substantially around here, and I don't see much merit in IMsabbel's denunciation of the Project's overall standards. If he'd care to talk about specific issues or things that cause this impression, that might be more constructive than simply saying that things are awful here.

3. The problem is a lack of organization in terms of applying for GSoC and other Open Source initiatives that provide grants.

Policy change required: keep the GSoC application area open at all times; possibly rename it to a more neutral name, such as "academic proposals", etc.; prune the ideas that have already entered the engine one month before deadline; write a statement about the Open Source goals of the engine and our support of coders wanting to tackle issues within Spring; apply at least one month ahead of the GSoC review period; do a search for other sources of educational grants, and express an interest; submit applications to "indie games" events and other activities that could raise Spring's profile.

This engine is a very good place for academic projects, imo. I can't think of a better way to get real support than to have people like imbaczek as mentors. We just need to be able to show that we're serious and organized.

4. Spring isn't "innovative" enough to be worth looking at.

Policy change required: focus more on keeping our front page up-to-date, showing the things people have been doing; encourage a more open policy regarding information on the front pages, so that people are encouraged to put information there; quit using a proprietary movie format, so that we can just embed YouTube videos as people release them, etc. Overall, I would argue that Spring's a very innovative place- the world needs to see it.

We really need a moderator who's real job is finding news and then acting to support it, on a weekly basis. I think that's what Neddie should be doing; it wouldn't be anywhere near as exhausting as trying to promote Spring world-wide, it doesn't require that we cross some mythical "it's done enough" milestone... and every month or so, he could compile a digest of the top events and send out a press release.


Obviously, all of the above is pretty darn controversial, but let's face it; all of the moves Spring's made to be embraced by the Open Source community in general have been failures, and GSoC's not the only symptom of this problem.

[Gota]

So what your saying is that if there are 2 buildings,one tall,extravagant and covered with gold and diamonds representing the commercial projects,and the other, a small,broken down shack without any paint,representing the open source projects,than we are the dog poo on the shack's lawn?

I disagree.

[Argh]

That's a bizarre analogy, and while you certainly win points for originality, I can't really follow your conclusion there or what you're trying to say. Can you maybe re-phrase that for clarity?

[Gota]

dis

Obviously, all of the above is pretty darn controversial, but let's face it; all of the moves Spring's made to be embraced by the Open Source community in general have been failures, and GSoC's not the only symptom of this problem.

[Argh]

I'm still not clear on what you're trying to say, can you elaborate a bit?

[Gota]

Can i write a wall of text?I can.Will I?No.
I don't agree Spring has been rejected by the "open source community".

[hoijui]

1. & 2. are to establish a Stasi like regime, and directly and practically works against 4., and all this for getting deeper up into Googles ass. YEAH! the problem is, if the compromise is that big, you should rather give up finding one. if you had to cut off your arm to get a cigarette, it is probably better to give up smoking.
The problem with 3. is, that Google wants a section called Google Summer of Code or Gsoc on our page. they specifically named the lack of this as a negative last year.

about the licensing thing: i never heard that anyone of Google mentioned this as a problem, and i doubt they investigated that much into spring to even know about that. of course it is all over the forum, but there is also everything else all over the forum, and they wont read all our forum.

[Argh]

I'm not arguing for or against these things, for the most part. I'm just putting our choices in plain view.

I don't think either 1 or 2 are in any way contrary to 4, however.

After all, most of the real innovation is in projects that aren't covered by no. 1.

[SeanHeron]

I disagree Hoijui - I'm not too concerned with pushing the Spring Engine myself, (so I'm not going to lean on this), but if I were, then removing copyright infringing material and continuing to improve the Forum climate (ie 1. and 2.) would be exactly what I'd go for. (I'll take the opportunity and thank moderation here - there's been considerable change to the better in the recent past).
I think your comparison (Hoijui) is off the mark, and for me moving on the aforementioned issues has little to nothing to do with GSoC - both actions make sense to me in and by themselves.

P.S.
3. I can not really judge, as I haven't followed the application process very closely. Just regarding Hoijui's point, I think keeping a section open all year, and then opening a specific GSoC section at the required time can go hand in hand. - and 4. is hard for me to gauge, I'd not assumed Spring was seen as "rusty" from the outside)

Edited for clarity

[Argh]

On no. 3... meh, if this was something that was that important, then I'm failing to see it, when looking at a lot of the projects that were accepted. Moreover, if you knew that beforehand, why wasn't it brought up and dealt with?

On no. 4... yes, I think it's a reality. We aren't talking about the new things that happen here every week, on the front page, so it's always stale and lame.

This is exactly what I said would happen, when I boycotted participating in front-page activities because certain people here decided that they'd support a more-restrictive regime.

For example, we've had front-page banners for an unreleased game for over a year now, which has to make us look like idiots, and it must disappoint people coming here looking for a gaming fix.

Yet, when somebody had the balls to bring it up and politely request that it be taken down... nothing happened.

On no. 2, as I've said, I don't think there's much evidence to support IMsabbel's claims; I'm not really in favor of any dramatic changes in current policy. I just thought it should be discussed, if we're reviewing "what went wrong", since it was a point that was raised.

[Master-Athmos]

Well I don't agree on sort of "removing" IP afflicted stuff from the forums just for Google. Not only would this kill like 80% of the community here but I also do not see the main reason behind this. Spring isn't based more on rip-offs than e.g. ScummVM. Actually it is even way lass as it's not just about running the exact old stuff like e.g. for the Lucas Arts Adventures but it actually just evolved the IP afflicted mods like in case of TA add real 3D and the countless other improvements. It might be a good idea though to point the IP-free stuff a bit more but totally supressing anything with IP problems isn't needed in my opinion...

I agree though in terms of the forum. While I do not believe that this was a major letdown for GSoC there really is too much spammy chat behaviour around here often spiced with lots of disrespect towards a certain user...

If there's an interest to get into the next GSoC I really would manage things more early, more open and more detailed. Spring should apply on the very first day of it being possible and not on like the very last day. The project descriptions should be more detailed and maybe the mentors should stand out a bit more. From reading the topics about it I actually only know of one person who actually said right out that he's going to be a mentor. My guess is that this is Spring's main flaw for the GSoC: They probably want some distinct and committed mentors who really can guide students through the project. When reading through the forum and seeing things like "I might apply for being a mentor" I also would hesitate to grant this project as it sounds like there are some hobbyist coders with some limited understanding of the engine which is no good starting point. We might need a more detailed / more friendly and open presentation of the mentors presenting their work on the engine proving the existence of the needed experience together with a nice introduction. Currently it's more of us begging for additional coders doing the work for us than inviting others to help...

[Argh]

I agree in terms of ScummVM, etc. That's a good argument.

It can be countered that ScummVM serves a real need- that these old adventure games simply can't be run any other way- but, like Spring, it has its roots in emulation, and that didn't seem to deter Google.

That idea's been brought up elsewhere on the Forums very strongly, though, so like IMsabbel's comments, I thought I'd at least present the Devil's case.

Personally, I think that the IP issue's dead; Spring's safe and the only really exposed part is the SpringDownloader system and possibly the Official Server.

But I don't think that Atari's ever going to try to mess with either- it's free advertising for them, should the OTA IP ever get used again. Which looks doubtful, frankly, given the state of their finances and a reasonable assessment of their risk. Who knows; maybe Star Trek Online will be a major cash cow, and get them back on their feet again. There aren't any other players, though, and there's just no incentive to go after Spring at this late date, so I think it's a dead issue at this point.

I also agree with the last paragraph; clearly, one of the factors has to have been that there was less-than-perfect organization and timing. That said, it's hard to pick on the people involved there, as I wasn't exactly timely myself (ofc, neither would I have been a mentor or paid, but whatever, all of us with a strong interest in the Project should have helped more than we did, imo).

[hoijui]

On no. 3... meh, if this was something that was that important, then I'm failing to see it, when looking at a lot of the projects that were accepted. Moreover, if you knew that beforehand, why wasn't it brought up and dealt with?

it was dealt with, we had a gsoc forum and a gsoc wiki page this year.

[Otherside]

i say we cut TA off like if it was a gangrenous limb .

[zwzsg]

Trying to enforce a friendly atmosphere in the forum would backfire on us. The content developpers and the people you call trolls are often the same persons. When you start censoring creative people, they get mightly annoyed and then they leave.

So, maybe you'd have a friendly atmosphere, but only in a dead forum whose only spark of life would be never-answered posts from lost newcomers.

[AF]

Its a sign of poor site design that forum atmosphere really matters since it should be possible to enter the development ecosystem and participate indiviudally or as a contributor without requiring the exposure to such atmosphere.

Do I need t involve myself in forum politics to make programs with Ogre? What about CodeIgniter? Wordpress??

Regarding TA:

If Fat controller or anyone else needs help setting up a Spring TA sister site, I will help, although for now it would be purely discussion until after April as I have a heavy workload, so it's kind of hard to pull a site theme out of a hat atm.

[Argh]

Trying to enforce a friendly atmosphere in the forum would backfire on us. The content developpers and the people you call trolls are often the same persons. When you start censoring creative people, they get mightly annoyed and then they leave.

As I've said, I don't personally think that we need a big change of policy, nor do I think it was a major contributor to Google's decision.

Probably Master-Athmos's analysis is most correct; we did too little, too late, and without enough organization.

That said...

I can't think of a single person who's left because they weren't able to obey the rules, voluntarily or not, whose absence has made me feel like the Forums are less interesting and useful. None of them were people we can't live without, as a Project. That may seem a bit cold, but let's face it; I'm not very interested in things that aren't vital.

Overall, most of the really creative people here are *nice*. Those of us who aren't nice... are more ~polite~ than we used to be. It's not a terrible thing.

The last place I was at was, to put it bluntly, a "Stasi hell", but it worked, and since it's still around, and some of the old crew's still there, people can verify everything I'm saying here, should they wish.

It was full of very creative people happily sharing information with one another. Not everything- there were certain projects that had the 1337 crews that knew certain hacks.

But I and several other folks made it a priority to re-create what they'd done, and then teach others how to do it, and pretty soon that part of the culture evaporated. I certainly can't claim a lot of the credit- I mainly just figured out how to implement custom Cockpits and a few other things, and then wrote tutorials so that it was no longer mysterious. But it spread, others started sharing hacks, and there's little that was discovered that wasn't shared.

It was a *lot* more open, in terms of real sharing, than Spring has been, regardless of what our licenses say. And even now, if you go read their forums, you'll find that they have a lot of tutorials, links to useful software, etc.

And they weren't small or just a tiny group of fanatics, either. The games are often of comparable complexity, with tens of thousands of lines of code involved and dozens of models. OK, so it didn't require as much coder-foo; most of it was "merely data-entry" and not "coding" per-se, but still, these were (and are) huge projects.

The Lancer's Reactor mod community was one of the largest mod communities on the Internet at one point, period, if we go by download numbers and unique projects (they had literally hundreds of mods, compared to our pathetic numbers), and they still have more activity on their Forums right now by unique members trying to complete projects than we do, even after having to move their Forums around a lot, etc. after Microsoft quit supporting them, and 8 years after that game was released, as of the last time I lurked, about 3 months ago.

I wasn't a moderator there, but they probably have some valuable lessons for us about how to build a healthier, happier community. Heck, maybe they weren't actually 'Stasis'; maybe they just got lucky. But I really doubt it.

The main thing I saw, as a forum-goer, was the complete lack of assholes and trolls. Most derails outside OT were a potential ban; I remember that I got a PM warning for merely being a bit blunt (in what I ~thought~ was a nice way) once. Page-long flames, picture derails, and all the usual bullshit we see here on a regular basis *never* happened, because you got banned very quickly for being a dick.

Maybe there is some secret sauce involved- perhaps we should ask 'em about it. I think "Chips" is still involved- he was one of the Big Kahoonas, back in the day, so perhaps we should look him up, ask for free advice.

Personally, I think it's too late for that. I don't think there's any point in trying a new model now, unless we want to get really serious about growing the community.

Of course, there is ~something~ to be said for growing the community. Otherwise, at the rate we're going, there won't be one in a year. So, somebody in charge here might want to talk to Chips; tell him that Argh says hello- IDK whether he'll remember me, but IIRC, they back-ported at least some of my old sub-forum, so maybe it'll help open the door, since I was (believe it or not!) a well-liked person there, for my many guides and other contributions, such as codebase projects and other things.

[Peet]

Of course, there is ~something~ to be said for growing the community. Otherwise, at the rate we're going, there won't be one in a year.

Haven't people been saying this for years?

[Argh]

<shrugs> look at the number of active projects, where we expect major releases sometime this year. It's a pretty pathetic number. I could give a shit for the holy "online playerbase" numbers, because they're 100% irrelevant to the Project; we could feature-freeze Spring right now, and the numbers would probably be there next year. It's safe to say, considering that Spring is up at the top of a Google search for "Total Annihilation 2", that we have a steady market in that sense.

I'd like to see at least 20 minor-game projects leveraging Spring to build all sorts of nice projects all the time, frankly, as a minimum standard for "success". A few die-hard, multi-year giant projects, mainly by hardened veterans of TAU doesn't cut it.

I think one of the major obstacles there is content production. I intend to spend some time on KaiserJ's "parts" concept when I finally have some time to spare for art again. I think it's a great idea for finally giving people that same "throw shit together" model that has worked well elsewhere.

[zwzsg]

Of course, there is ~something~ to be said for growing the community. Otherwise, at the rate we're going, there won't be one in a year.

Haven't people been saying this for years?

My measure is number of people in lobby. 343 right now. It's growing. Not an explosive growth, more like a staganation or small growth, but definitively not dying.