Re: [Adonthell-devel] Sign of life

[Chris Frey]

Hi Kai,

I hear ya. :-)  I don't have time for much programming these days besides
work related stuff, and general life can be sometimes more interesting
as we get older, or more distracting, or even more demanding. :-)

As much as it may not make sense to the developer, tarball releases
seem to be an important tangible item for the end user.  Source code
is just too scary for them unless it comes in a tarball or a precompiled
binary package.

And I can't blame them too much really.

It's a lesson I've just recently relearned the hard way, so I figured I'd
share it here.  A project that doesn't have regular releases is in danger
of getting forgotten.  Or in other words, the single most important thing
for an open source project is having regular, maybe even monthly, releases.
Every other item, especially the rewrites or redesigns, need to be done
in a way that doesn't interrupt those releases.

I've seen the dangers happen in 3 projects just over the past few years.
And redesigns can be project killers.

Not sure if that helps, or just adds more pressure, but I can testify
that after making an official release... man, the pressure is gone for a
while! :-)  And developers need that clean slate every now and then too,
to make developing fun again.  Staring at a long todo list that never
seems to budge can wear you down after a while.

How far away is Adonthell from a release?  Any release, even an experimental
one.

- Chris



On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 08:53:43PM +0200, Kai Sterker wrote:
> Hey everyone,
> 
> just wanted to say I'm still around and that the only excuse I have
> for the lack of activity is the lack of motivation.
> 
> It's not that I'd be fed up with Adonthell or such. In fact, it
> frequently comes to my mind lately, which is why I'm finally writing
> this. I guess what kills my motivation is working alone on stuff, it's
> just not much fun any longer. For me, part of what made working on the
> project so much fun were the people ... you. Working out issues
> together, looking and trying the things committed by others, even the
> informal competition of who'd have his task implemented first -- all
> that really gives a boost to motivation.
> 
> So to sum this up, I'm basically on stand-by, ready to wrap up the WE
> remake and to finally start with DB at the very moment where I no
> longer have to do this on my own. In truth, my vacation is coming up
> in June, so I'll be occupied otherwise for a few weeks, but let's not
> be picky ;-).
> 
> Kai
> 
> P.S. I guess one logical step would be to advertise the project some
> more, so that somebody with the right talents and the time to spare
> gets made aware of our need. But that also requires motivation. It's a
> vicious circle :-P.
> 
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