Release Celestia 1.4.0 final?

Evil Dr Ganymede · Post #1by **Evil Dr Ganymede** » 18.04.2005, 00:24

If there's going to be no more development for a while (or at least, we seem to have reached a very long pause in it), would it be possible to officially finalised and release the latest prerelease as the final version of 1.4.0 for now? Given 1.4.0pre6 is already vastly superior to 1.3.2, it's a shame that it's not the version that's obviously available to the public on the website at http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia .

PlutonianEmpire · Post #2by **PlutonianEmpire** » 18.04.2005, 00:37

I"m inclined to agree.

Post #3by **selden** » 18.04.2005, 01:02

Unfortunately, the person who does most of Celestia's graphics development and the person who packages Celestia for a "final release" are one and the same. And Chris seems to be taking a vacation from it.

Post #4by **ElChristou** » 18.04.2005, 02:10

selden wrote:Unfortunately, the person who does most of Celestia's graphics development and the person who packages Celestia for a "final release" are one and the same. And Chris seems to be taking a vacation from it.

Damned!!

Selden, do you know what are Chris intentions for the future?
Someone knows ?

Evil Dr Ganymede · Post #5by **Evil Dr Ganymede** » 18.04.2005, 04:00

selden wrote:Unfortunately, the person who does most of Celestia's graphics development and the person who packages Celestia for a "final release" are one and the same. And Chris seems to be taking a vacation from it.

All the more reason to get 1.4.0 finalised then... if he is taking a break (or abandoning) it, at least we have the latest version out there as a public release. People can still do a heck of a lot with 1.4.0 after all.

Post #6by **t00fri** » 18.04.2005, 08:17

Evil Dr Ganymede wrote:
selden wrote:Unfortunately, the person who does most of Celestia's graphics development and the person who packages Celestia for a "final release" are one and the same. And Chris seems to be taking a vacation from it.

All the more reason to get 1.4.0 finalised then... if he is taking a break (or abandoning) it, at least we have the latest version out there as a public release. People can still do a heck of a lot with 1.4.0 after all.

I wrote Chris a respective email more than a week ago. It is still unanswered.

Bye Fridger

kikinho · Post #7by **kikinho** » 18.04.2005, 10:03

If he permanently stopped Celestia development, well, other people here can finish his work. Brendam, for example, did a small file that shows more information about a planet or moon.

Some features that could be implemented in the final version: add greenhouse effect values to increase very well temperature on a distant planet, even if it has high albedo. Or add gravity or a message error when two bodies collide. Or an extra option that allow us to change the color of stars, like turning that yellow star to a green star or violet star. Or a better improvement of binary stars orbits and illumination, or to Celestia rennders more fast textures and models.

What do you think about that? If Chris stopped his work for a very big time, I think it's time for other people to continue adding more improvements to Celestia.

PlutonianEmpire · Post #8by **PlutonianEmpire** » 18.04.2005, 11:57

kikinho wrote:If he permanently stopped Celestia development, well, other people here can finish his work. Brendam, for example, did a small file that shows more information about a planet or moon.

Some features that could be implemented in the final version: add greenhouse effect values to increase very well temperature on a distant planet, even if it has high albedo. Or add gravity or a message error when two bodies collide. Or an extra option that allow us to change the color of stars, like turning that yellow star to a green star or violet star. Or a better improvement of binary stars orbits and illumination, or to Celestia rennders more fast textures and models.

What do you think about that? If Chris stopped his work for a very big time, I think it's time for other people to continue adding more improvements to Celestia.

I'm inclined to agree here as well.

Post #9by **t00fri** » 18.04.2005, 12:24

kikinho wrote:If he permanently stopped Celestia development, well, other people here can finish his work. Brendam, for example, did a small file that shows more information about a planet or moon.

Some features that could be implemented in the final version: add greenhouse effect values to increase very well temperature on a distant planet, even if it has high albedo. Or add gravity or a message error when two bodies collide. Or an extra option that allow us to change the color of stars, like turning that yellow star to a green star or violet star. Or a better improvement of binary stars orbits and illumination, or to Celestia rennders more fast textures and models.

What do you think about that? If Chris stopped his work for a very big time, I think it's time for other people to continue adding more improvements to Celestia.

Celestia is published under the GNU public licence (GPL). So everyone is free to code into his/her private copy of Celestia whatever they like...

However for the official Celestia distribution, Chris holds the Copyright, and these are the authors of Celestia, who have a word to say what gets in and what is to stay out.

Code: Select all

Chris Laurel <claurel@www.shatters.net>
Clint Weisbrod <cweisbrod@cogeco.ca>
Fridger Schrempp <t00fri@mail.desy.de>
Bob Ippolito <bob@redivi.com>
Christophe Teyssier <chris@teyssier.org>
Hank Ramsey <hramsey@users.sourceforge.net>
Grant Hutchison <granthutchison@blueyonder.co.uk>

In agreement among all its developers, Celestia was designed to make no easy compromises as to accuracy and realism of simulation. Celestia is also designed quite flexibly such as to allow extensions in different directions via add-ons that leave however the core program code unaffected....

This way Celestia is able to serve a wide spectrum of interests related to the Universe. I think this is a good general strategy which should not be given up.

Bye Fridger

danielj · Post #10by **danielj** » 18.04.2005, 12:49

Chris is skiing too much!He has to stop his vacation or give the copyright to someone else.What is he thinking about?

Post #11by **t00fri** » 18.04.2005, 13:22

danielj wrote:Chris is skiing too much!He has to stop his vacation or give the copyright to someone else.What is he thinking about?

Chris is of course FREE to do whatever he likes in relation to Celestia.

However, some of us would clearly prefer to know his plans and see more emails answered ;-)

. Persoanlly, I think that --if the Celestia development under Chris' guidance is to be abandoned--Chris should announce it clearly. This high degree of effective paralysis of development during many past months is neither motivating for anyone nor good style in my eyes...

Bye Fridger

Harry · Post #12by **Harry** » 18.04.2005, 14:04

danielj wrote:Chris is skiing too much!He has to stop his vacation or give the copyright to someone else.What is he thinking about?

Yeah, I am sure your post will motivate Chris to work more on Celestia. Feel free to fork the Code if you think you can do better. :roll:

Harald

P.S: If you intended to be funny, try again - it didn't work.

Cham · Post #13by **Cham** » 18.04.2005, 14:08

Yes, I think that Chris should post a message just so say what are its plans for the futur. I'm really worried about Celestia developpment.

Post #14by **ElChristou** » 18.04.2005, 14:26

Harry wrote:
danielj wrote:Chris is skiing too much!He has to stop his vacation or give the copyright to someone else.What is he thinking about?
Yeah, I am sure your post will motivate Chris to work more on Celestia. Feel free to fork the Code if you think you can do better...

Well we can not tell Chris what to do...
But at least a clear position would be cool. If he want to stop for a while (2, 6 months, a years...) well ok, but a post to inform people (I'm thinking in old mates) is a minimum...

wcomer · Post #15by **wcomer** » 18.04.2005, 15:07

danielj wrote:Chris is skiing too much!He has to stop his vacation or give the copyright to someone else.What is he thinking about?

Daniel,

It comes to my attention that you may not be aware that your remarks are inappropriate and the reasons why they are inappropriate. The reason why your present remarks are grossly innapropriate is that your statements come from a place of your personal self interest without any reagrds for Chris's self interest. Chris has no social contract with you and therefore owes you nothing. If anything, you owe Chris gratitude for the work he has done in creating a tool which you use so frequently.

All the best,
Walton

Tosv · Post #16by **Tosv** » 18.04.2005, 16:35

This, again, raises the discussion on the weakness of having a project relying on one single person. First of all, we don??t know the reason to why Chris is not responding and we should not judge him. The question we should ask is, are there any unique knowledge that Chris has that can??t be found anywhere else in the community? Having a project leader is essential in all projects but what we seem to be missing here is a second leader that can take Chris place when he is away for some reason, as a kind of backup. Have anyone been talking to Chris about this? If we had a second leader the project would also be on a more stable ground.

I think Chris has done a tremendous job with Celestia but, as the rest of you, I??m a little bit worried about the last months inactivity.

Post #17by **t00fri** » 18.04.2005, 18:01

More than 3 months ago Chris wrote to me that he will only have little time to work on Celestia in a forthcoming period of time, but that this was only temporary. He also mentioned that I should expect a major code checkin from him soon. This did not happen as of today.

In between we only had one single email exchange about the best replacement value of the faulty conversion of 1 ly -> km in Celestia. While he promised to checkin the changes next day, that did not happen either...An understandable reason for this is the fact that the significant correction required will break plenty of cel://url's out there...

More than 10 days ago (and resending my mail again today!), I asked him what in his view temporary means as of 3 months later. No answer yet...

Tosv:
===
I think there is really nobody around who might replace Chris at this time. Certainly not among the present developers.

We should need, someone

1) being a 3d OpenGL wizzard,
2) with a solid knowledge in Astronomy/Astrophysics & Math
3) knowing the design principles and details of the Celestia code in and out
...
4) with plenty of spare time ;-)

Bye Fridger

Tosv · Post #18by **Tosv** » 18.04.2005, 19:01

Hmmm... As I said before. We really need a organization that is not relying on one person only. Maybe we, as t00fri, said, are unable to find a replacer for Chris at the moment, but something has to be done. Unfortunately i don??t have a solution. Celestia has gone from being a small project to a program that is used in schools, by hobbyists and a lot of other people and, as I see it, it??s more important than ever to keep it alive.

So, this is really a question that needs to be solved.

hank · Post #19by **hank** » 18.04.2005, 19:59

So what's required to finalize the 1.4 release? At least the following, I'd guess:

complete implementation of new features
test thoroughly
fix critical bugs
package release files
install and announce release download

Do we actually have volunteers willing/able to help Chris with any of this?

- Hank

Post #20by **t00fri** » 18.04.2005, 20:25

hank wrote:
...
Do we actually have volunteers willing/able to help Chris with any of this?
...
- Hank

When you talk about helping Chris, how do you imagine the communication to work with him? It's mostly ONE WAY traffic ;-)

Bye Fridger