Fridger (and Chris),
No one really wants to fork Celestia. No one wants to do Celestia development without Chris (even if that were possible). What we're trying to figure out is how to allow other people (e.g. doctorjoe, but hopefully many others) to also contribute to Celestia development in a productive way. Does Chris have any ideas about how we can do that?
- Hank
Experimental Celestia
-
t00fri
- Developer
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- With us: 22 years 7 months
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hank wrote:Fridger (and Chris),
No one really wants to fork Celestia. No one wants to do Celestia development without Chris (even if that were possible). What we're trying to figure out is how to allow other people (e.g. doctorjoe, but hopefully many others) to also contribute to Celestia development in a productive way. Does Chris have any ideas about how we can do that?
- Hank
Hank,
while I have specially addressed that issue in my mail to him, he has evaded answering (as several times previously already). While I can very well understand the reasons that continue to distract him from going on seriously with Celestia development, he has not given any medium range perspectives that might indicate a substantial improvement ... That's precisely also what makes me very uncertain how to decide for myself.
Frankly, I think there are no such medium range perspectives. The way I interpret the situation is as follows. Not surprisingly, Chris continues to feel a strong attachment to Celestia, since the program is his creation after all and he has spent a large amount of time with it. Hence, on the one hand, he has the strong desire to retain control also in the future. Without going into detail, the reasons for his distraction from developing that he gave to me, are such, however, that I would rather extrapolate those distractions to further increase rather than to decrease...
Bye Fridger
-
Topic authorPaolo
- Posts: 502
- Joined: 23.09.2002
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- Location: Pordenone/Italy
Fridger
Personally I feel scared about these words, can you give us some details please?
I know that these are private things but: is he ill?, is he involved in another project (4D viewer)? is he going to marry? or something else?
Like Hank said none of us would like to fork Celestia, we all love Celestia and we have a lot of admiration for Chris. So I think we all are feeling quite uncomfortable with these news specially if are referred to bad health situations.
By my side I think that if in the mid terms his distraction will increase I'll continue with "Experimental Celestia" or with something different in order to do not let the Celestia project die slowly and completely. For sure it will be necessary to start a strong developer recruiting campaign.
I'm sad that you are not interested in participating, but perhaps you'll reconsider your position in the future.
Personally I feel scared about these words, can you give us some details please?
I know that these are private things but: is he ill?, is he involved in another project (4D viewer)? is he going to marry? or something else?
Like Hank said none of us would like to fork Celestia, we all love Celestia and we have a lot of admiration for Chris. So I think we all are feeling quite uncomfortable with these news specially if are referred to bad health situations.
By my side I think that if in the mid terms his distraction will increase I'll continue with "Experimental Celestia" or with something different in order to do not let the Celestia project die slowly and completely. For sure it will be necessary to start a strong developer recruiting campaign.
I'm sad that you are not interested in participating, but perhaps you'll reconsider your position in the future.
-
t00fri
- Developer
- Posts: 8772
- Joined: 29.03.2002
- Age: 22
- With us: 22 years 7 months
- Location: Hamburg, Germany
Paolo wrote:Fridger
Personally I feel scared about these words, can you give us some details please?
I know that these are private things but: is he ill?, is he involved in another project (4D viewer)? is he going to marry? or something else?
Like Hank said none of us would like to fork Celestia, we all love Celestia and we have a lot of admiration for Chris. So I think we all are feeling quite uncomfortable with these news specially if are referred to bad health situations.
Don't worry, his health is excellent. Climbing is surely one of his distractions
By my side I think that if in the mid terms his distraction will increase I'll continue with "Experimental Celestia" or with something different in order to do not let the Celestia project die slowly and completely. For sure it will be necessary to start a strong developer recruiting campaign.
I'm sad that you are not interested in participating, but perhaps you'll reconsider your position in the future.
Paulo, I am similarly uncertain what to do...
Some further "confessions" and thoughts.:
Even when development was still very active in the main Celestia branch, I have never enjoyed or participated in some highly organized, administrated coding scenario involving many people whose qualifications were not too convincing. Before joining Celestia, I have intensively collaborated for 11 1/2 years (!) just with Elwood Downey, the creator and author of XEphem, the classical UNIX Ephemeris program one finds in every astronomical and physics institution...
For a long and intensive period I had a close collaboration with Chris and also with Christophe and later on various projects with Grant. That's the kind of environment I like to be in. Small, transparent and competent. I learned quite a lot from each one of my collaborators. That sort of thing I DO enjoy indeed...
Also very personally spoken, I feel NO missionary urge whatsoever towards convincing the "whole world" to use Celestia
. That's also why "download managers" and language internationalization don't excite me.
That's certainly NOT what makes me spend a weekend into Celestia.
I am doing that work ENTIRELY for my own pleasure and just to relax from my professional work (Chris is getting all the credits anyhow
). I am ready to share the results of my Celestia work with others. That's about it. Not more not less.
I am simply NOT made to fit into an organized coding structure with 15 pages full of rules, assignments to
"tree" structures like
LEADER
DEPUTY LEADER
ADMINISTRATOR
1st CODER.......17th CODER...
1st DEGUGGER ....27th DEBUGGER
...
In such an environment I feel emprisoned and would just cause trouble
Bye Fridger
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Topic authorPaolo
- Posts: 502
- Joined: 23.09.2002
- With us: 22 years 2 months
- Location: Pordenone/Italy
Hi Fridger
First of all I'm glad to listen that Chris is ok, and moreover I'm happy to see his new post in Celestia development mailing list. His last phrase is somewhat encouraging in order to keep a breath of life in Celestia development.
About Celestia development
In a future I would like to see in Celestia (not sorted):
- true cross platform functionalities and features alignment,
- native grids for multiple reference systems,
- collision detection,
- wavelenght filters,
- script recording,
- unified multiplatform GUI,
- simplified schematical visualizations,
- data visualizations, import, export, printing,
- telescope drive,
- models animations,
- realtime shadows on models and surfaces,
- realtime 3D planetary landscapes (capable of creating the same magic of the Titan's postcards created by Runar),
- realtime accurate gravity simulation applied to the observer,
- a cosmological time dependent view of the universe,
- gravitational lens effects,
- a realtime virtual reality of the universe where we all can meet and chat,
and more.
Some of these ideas are easy to implement, other are easy but require a lot of coding time, other are more difficult. IMHO right now none of them is really impossible to implement in order of unavailability of data or technology.
About the rules and team size.
I can understand perfectly your doubts about Experimental Celestia rules. In my mind I have considered only what was happening in Celestia about one year ago:
- Leader: Chris
- Coordinator:Chris
- Win ver: Chris
- Linux KDE ver: Christophe
- Linux GTK ver: Pat
- MacOs ver: Hank
- Coders, Testers, supporters: Fridger, Grant, Selden, Don, Harald, (Bob, Clint).
(Sorry if I have missed or misplaced someone.
)
Its was a team of 8-9 people that almost on regular bases was discussing in development mailing list, submitting ideas, bug reports, bugfixes and new code. Some of you have created project related subteams of 2-3 people like I have explained in the rules.
My rules was intended for the new people that would join the team in order to explain clearily what they should expect to find and how they must behave.
In sourceforge is clearily explained that 20 people creates a large team difficult to manage without clear rules, and they do not advise to extend a team over 20 people. So I've considered the worst situation. Instead a team of about 10 people, like Celestia was, is the ideal situation.
Rules (written and unwritten, laws and upbringing) makes people free. Without there is only chaos and oppression.
Conclusion
At the end of this long post, fortunately I can say that it seems that probably Experimental Celestia won't be necessary, I hope that DoctorJoe and perhaps Toti and someone else will be included soon in the official team, and so I'll return to play with CELUI.
First of all I'm glad to listen that Chris is ok, and moreover I'm happy to see his new post in Celestia development mailing list. His last phrase is somewhat encouraging in order to keep a breath of life in Celestia development.
About Celestia development
I don't want to see a Celestia on every PC of the Earth too, but I would like to have a living Celestia.t00fri wrote:Also very personally spoken, I feel NO missionary urge whatsoever towards convincing the "whole world" to use Celestia.
I dont' want to have only a download manager and a multilanguage GUI.t00fri wrote:That's also why "download managers" and language internationalization don't excite me.
That's certainly NOT what makes me spend a weekend into Celestia.
In a future I would like to see in Celestia (not sorted):
- true cross platform functionalities and features alignment,
- native grids for multiple reference systems,
- collision detection,
- wavelenght filters,
- script recording,
- unified multiplatform GUI,
- simplified schematical visualizations,
- data visualizations, import, export, printing,
- telescope drive,
- models animations,
- realtime shadows on models and surfaces,
- realtime 3D planetary landscapes (capable of creating the same magic of the Titan's postcards created by Runar),
- realtime accurate gravity simulation applied to the observer,
- a cosmological time dependent view of the universe,
- gravitational lens effects,
- a realtime virtual reality of the universe where we all can meet and chat,
and more.
Some of these ideas are easy to implement, other are easy but require a lot of coding time, other are more difficult. IMHO right now none of them is really impossible to implement in order of unavailability of data or technology.
About the rules and team size.
I can understand perfectly your doubts about Experimental Celestia rules. In my mind I have considered only what was happening in Celestia about one year ago:
- Leader: Chris
- Coordinator:Chris
- Win ver: Chris
- Linux KDE ver: Christophe
- Linux GTK ver: Pat
- MacOs ver: Hank
- Coders, Testers, supporters: Fridger, Grant, Selden, Don, Harald, (Bob, Clint).
(Sorry if I have missed or misplaced someone.
)Its was a team of 8-9 people that almost on regular bases was discussing in development mailing list, submitting ideas, bug reports, bugfixes and new code. Some of you have created project related subteams of 2-3 people like I have explained in the rules.
My rules was intended for the new people that would join the team in order to explain clearily what they should expect to find and how they must behave.
In sourceforge is clearily explained that 20 people creates a large team difficult to manage without clear rules, and they do not advise to extend a team over 20 people. So I've considered the worst situation. Instead a team of about 10 people, like Celestia was, is the ideal situation.
t00fri wrote:In such an environment I feel emprisoned and would just cause trouble
Rules (written and unwritten, laws and upbringing) makes people free. Without there is only chaos and oppression.
Conclusion
At the end of this long post, fortunately I can say that it seems that probably Experimental Celestia won't be necessary, I hope that DoctorJoe and perhaps Toti and someone else will be included soon in the official team, and so I'll return to play with CELUI.