Questions about Chris Laurel

[danielj]

I don??t think he have the right to it.I am 31 years old and HAVE NEVER HAD a love affair!

...
The topic here is not about a fork (not for now) but to push Chris to at least inform his collaborators (and why not the community) about those "blank" in the dev. It'st a question of respect and politeness I guess...

Christophe rephrased my main initial point very well, while a number of other writers above commented wrto issues that are of secondary relevance, really.

It is of course clear that noone would ever expect Chris L. to renounce of a love affair in favour of some software project like Celestia . Really, Daniel you argue besides the point. And so did others.

Of course, as to these matters, I can only speak for myself:

In my own "environment" at least, I am just NOT used at all that someone keeps me waiting for 2.5 months without giving ANY kind of notice whatsoever!!!

Is this to be considered an OpenSource speciality or just bad style ??

There are a number of more or less nasty attributes anyone with a decent upbringing will start assigning to such a behaviour. In particular if long-time collaborators are concerned.

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

I don??t think he have the right to it.I am 31 years old and HAVE NEVER HAD a love affair!

That sounds "serious", indeed.

Look for instance at the total population of Brazil! If all Brazilians would share your point of view... there would soon not even remain enough Samba dancers at "Carnival em Rio de Janeiro"

Bye Fridger

[ElChristou]

I don??t think he have the right to it.I am 31 years old and HAVE NEVER HAD a love affair!

Ouch! ...

Daniel, stop everything, throw your computer by the window and go outside NOW!

[t00fri]

I don??t think he have the right to it.I am 31 years old and HAVE NEVER HAD a love affair!

Ouch! ...

Daniel, stop everything, throw your computer by the window and go outside NOW!

Looking for WHAT?... ahem!

Of course, if only to return with a freshly cooked Laotian Pizza

[ElChristou]

...Looing for WHAT?... ahem!

Of course, if only to return with a freshly cooked Laotian Pizza

Of course for a Laotian Pizza, what else??

[Fenerit]

Well, apart the Laotian pizza which ingradients are yet obscure to me, should seem that in the case of "love affair" as Chris motivation for the Celestia's departure, instead of an obscure apartment's restructuration or a new bathroom, the problem to be what should happen whether all this was not true and the Chris "official love", the (now) "ex", should read this topic!

[t00fri]

Well, apart the Laotian pizza which ingradients are yet obscure to me,

It's quite easy: you start with a bed of small red hot chilis instead of the usual dough! Then ... you poor lots of oister sauce over the whole arrangement. And finally, ...



Bye Fridger

[Fenerit]

Well, apart the Laotian pizza which ingradients are yet obscure to me,

It's quite easy: you start with a bed of small red hot chilis instead of the usual dough! Then ... you poor lots of oister sauce over the whole arrangement. And finally, ...



Bye Fridger

Whoa! Seas and mountains...

[Don. Edwards]

We could start a petition. Everyone put there name on it and swamp the internet with it to see if it might bring Chris out of hiding. You know darn well he is out there, at least checking emails and doing some kind of occasional browsing even if he is involved in a relationship.

It will have at least two results, he comes in and talks to us, or he continues to ignore the community as a whole. If after the petition, he chooses not to step up, then we as the Celestia community can try and take things into our own hands, fork the project, and continue development on our own.

If Chris decides to pop back into development some time down the line, than he can try and catch up to the present development, or turn over all his materials/code to the project developers and let them go on from there. This would mean he would be divorcing himself from Celestia.

Worst case scenario on this is that Celestia is truncated into two separate but parallel applications that share interoperability. One stagnate, one moving forward.

Best case scenario is that the projects can be reemerged and Celestia become better for it.

Its and idea at least. I don't think anyone has come with a plan like this.

Its worth a try, and it may bring Chris back at least to tell us off or to give us his blessing.


Oh and to danielj, please get out there and experience life. The world is not Celestia.


Don. Edwards

[t00fri]

Don,

I think you misunderstood what is at stake here. Two weeks ago, when ElChristou, myself and Runar opened our new CelestialMatters Forum, I sent an invitation to Chris L. by email, and INDEED, the same day he registered as a user without leaving any comment. So sure, I wouldn't need a petition to reach him. A simple email certainly will do the job as usual.

The actual issue is, however, that there is a number of us who have been closely collaborating with Chris L. for 5-6 years!!! This includes not only myself, but also Selden and Christophe Teyssier, for example. Let alone quite a few other loyal devs, contributors and users.

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Letting close collaborators just hang around for 2.5 months without even sending a short apology or other kind of message, can only be taken as a sign of effective disregard for those people who have committed themselves to work with him for FREE during such a long time!
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You don't want to really suggest that we are to beg for his attention under these circumstances, do you?

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

Fridger,

I guess I missed the part about his joining your site. So I can see what you mean. I is a definite and total disregard to all of you. I myself in that situation would take a serious look at the whole picture, as I am sure you have. You just do not do something like this to fellow coders and collaborators.

I have a feeling Chris is up to something and I have a very bad feeling about this. He has made some very big changes in his life as we all know, and this is probably just the tip of the iceberg I am sure. Lets look at a few things. He quit his long term job, he is supposedly remodeling his home. These are big changes. What do they mean, well anything at this point. But one thing is clear, he said he was going to work full time on Celestia, and he lied about that. He is blowing off all his co-developers.

On the other hand, maybe he is working full time on Celestia. Maybe he has chosen to close the project to all outside code and development and is internalizing it. What happens to the GPL license if he totally rewrites the entire code of Celestia into something else. He has the right, it is his code. But what else can we come up with at this point. He isn't talking to anyone in the Celestia community, and we are not getting any updates on what he is up to.

What is he up too?

All I can say is that I hope that this doesn't mean Celestia might be going commercial. Maybe Chris is looking at it as a cash cow now. Maybe he has entered into an agreement with a software publisher/distributer. This is hypothetical at this point. But it sure is a possibly at this point. We can only wait and see.

All in all this does not look good.

Don. Edwards

[LordFerret]

What if Chris never returns? What then?

Why is there no "2nd-in-command" or "vice-president" in charge of Celestia to pick up and follow through where Chris has left off? Wasn't such project managment ever discussed or planned-for?

Why are the devs responsible not gathering together to vote and decide on crucial decisions in Chris' absence? Isn't that what normally happens (real world)?

The more time that passes, the farther behind Celestia's standing falls. The competition out there is stiff. Celestia will be left by the way-side if its development is not allowed to move forward.

My 2-cents.

[Cham]

Chris got a new girlfriend recently, and then... oops, a little accident ...that may explain everything !

[Don. Edwards]

Ah, so we are back to what I said earlier, he dumped everything for a chick and an oops. Those darn Oops' can suck the life out of everything.

Great, so here we still are, twiddling our collective thumbs for eternity.

Don. Edwards

[t00fri]

As I wrote earlier, I disbelieve that anything particular happened apart from the end of Chris' NVIDIA employment with lots more spare time, a new relation, and the remodeling of his entire appartment.

Many of us know about this strange "hiding" pattern of Chris already. Before the release of Celestia 1.4, Chris was hiding for as much as ONE year without averting anyone. It then was about 2 years ago, when I have released together with Toti our Celestia-FT-1.x versions containing all our new galaxy code and the rendering of 10000+ NGC/IC galaxies. At that time I had threatened already to fork ...

Chris was not happy about this and one day reappeared without any apology or much of an excuse, integrated our large amount of new code into Celestia and we proceeded as "usual" . Celestia 1.4. was released subsequently.

From that time I still have a deal with him that I am entitled to continue development in CVS, should he decide again to be absent for an extended period.

However, the situation is quite different now, i.e. two years later: If I can find the time, I will NOT proceed developing Celestia proper, but rather start my own cosmological visualization project that I plan to realize since more than 3 years.

Sure, it will incorporate much of the experience gained over the years with Celestia and initially at least, also quite a bit of code from Celestia. But altogether it will be a much wider and intrinsically new framework, as I detailed several times.

The respective site and forum will be CelestialMatters! So a number of things are getting on their way already...

Bye Fridger

[Christophe]

Fridger,

Have you considered another explanation, that Chris might already be hard at work on Celestia but under NDA from some new employer? I've seen other opensource projects going in stealth mode before, especialy when being adopted by some company or organization. But I guess in that case some kind of warning to the most active contributers would have been in order, wouldn't it?

Anyway, the problem is not so much that Chris has gone missing, the problem is that he is the true father of Celestia and author of probably over 80% of it. Forking would be meaningless without someone as knowledgeable as him in OpenGL and astromechanics to take the lead.

We've known for several years already that our inability to foster new contributors was the weakest point of the project, Chris' temporary or permanent departure makes it all the more acute.

[ElChristou]

...We've known for several years already that our inability to foster new contributors was the weakest point of the project, Chris' temporary or permanent departure makes it all the more acute.

To me, this is a deliberate point; more and more I think Chris want to avoid too many people being intimate with Celestia's code to prevent eventual and easy fork...

[t00fri]

Fridger,

Have you considered another explanation, that Chris might already be hard at work on Celestia but under NDA from some new employer? I've seen other opensource projects going in stealth mode before, especialy when being adopted by some company or organization. But I guess in that case some kind of warning to the most active contributers would have been in order, wouldn't it?

Christophe,

just before his vanishing, Chris wrote to me about various Celestia-related professional alternatives in which he was interested in after NVIDIA. Throughout he emphasized that Celestia will ALWAYS remain OpenSource. Yet some more employer-specific variant might apply, as it has happened earlier, when he did some temporary (paid) NASA-contracting work in Celestia.

If there was a clear-cut new professional assignment meanwhile, notably in connection with Celestia, I would rather assume in his favor that he would have let some of us know.

Anyway, the problem is not so much that Chris has gone missing, the problem is that he is the true father of Celestia and author of probably over 80% of it. Forking would be meaningless without someone as knowledgeable as him in OpenGL and astromechanics to take the lead.

Here I don't see a big problem in principle. Let me briefly touch upon the points you were rising:

Firstly, I doubt that really 80% of the code is from Chris, if all the multi-platform code is counted, your extensive code-work over the years, as well as mine, that of others and last not least our vast amount of Celestia-FT code. Note that the latter you cannot trace automatically in CVS, since it was Chris who entered it (virtually without ANY changes) under his own name and COPYRIGHT. But there are our Celestia-FT-1.x releases that clearly document the large amount of new code from us. Also a program like Celestia needs a LARGE non-trivial astronomical/astrophysical database besides mere C++ code. So all the work by Grant and myself in that direction must certainly be counted as well. Finally, --not to forget-- there was a significant codebase from the OpenUniverse predecessor of Celestia that flew into Celestia's code initially!

While clearly I agree that Celestia is Chris' "baby", your 80% seems a way too gracious number...

Next, as to the in-depth knowledge about astromechanics, astrophysics, cosmology etc we better don't start comparing . Independently of my large academic training & professional advantage, I also was involved before Celestia for 11 years with XEphem , for example...

Indeed, the real issue is OpenGL. But on the one hand much can be learned if necessary AND on the other hand, interested people can be found who know it well enough.

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In any case, as a VERY experienced research scientist, my credo has always been genuine TEAM WORK rather than a one-man show featuring poor coordination throughout!
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As I wrote above and also privately to Chris L., I am convinced that for a survival of Celestia on a longer time scale, its framework is not wide enough. It is certainly TOO narrow for a professional life time! More and more respectable competitors are appearing on the scene, from Google to Mitaka etc. People will increasingly copy code from Celestia and use it for further planetarium software etc. New young talents might appear also...

So as concerns myself, I have made my decisions that I have also discussed with Chris L. earlier. Two years ago during Chris' previous hiding, I was VERY close to a proper fork, based on Celestia-FT. Now I will eventually start my own project about Cosmological Visualization which will strongly profit from experience with and code from Celestia, but as to its underlying framework, it will be entirely different and thus NOT to be seen as a continuation of Celestia proper.

Cheers,
Fridger

[Christophe]

Throughout he emphasized that Celestia will ALWAYS remain OpenSource. Yet some more employer-specific variant might apply, as it has happened earlier, when he did some temporary (paid) NASA-contracting work in Celestia.

I wasn't thinking of a closed source Celestia here, anyone wishing to do that would need to first seek approval of all copyright holders, we would have heard of it and that would anyway be bound to failure. I was thinking of just making the development behind closed doors for a while, that's for example what Novell did with Xgl for almost a year in 2005.

While clearly I agree that Celestia is Chris' "baby", your 80% seems a way too gracious number...

Sure, my 80% figure was not to be taken litteraly, but you have to admit that Chris did most of the heavy work. The GUI is just the icing on the cake, and I know that personnaly I have only touched marginaly to the core stuff: cel urls, multiview, utf8 and i18n, a bug fix here and there, some minor improvements... the full list is easily browsable on Ohloh.

Next, as to the in-depth knowledge about astromechanics, astrophysics, cosmology etc we better don't start comparing ;-) . Independently of my large academic training & professional advantage, I also was involved before Celestia for 11 years with XEphem , for example...

Sure there are some very talented and knowledgeable contributors beside Chris. Note still that there aren't that many, here again Ohloh shows that there's only been 5 active contributers in the last 6 months. Note also that I said in OpenGL and astromechanics.

Indeed, the real issue is OpenGL. But on the one hand much can be learned if necessary AND on the other hand, interested people can be found who know it well enough.

I don't think you can get to a satisfactory level in OpenGL without using it daily and preferably professionaly. I know there are people out there well versed in this craft but obviously there aren't that many of them who are interested in astronomy and free software.

-----------------------------------------------
In any case, as a VERY experienced research scientist, my credo has always been genuine TEAM WORK rather than a one-man show featuring poor coordination throughout!
-----------------------------------------------

That is spot on, although I'm not sure that mixes very well with the FLOSS way of doing things. For that kind of team work to be effective you need clear cut objectives, a schedule, a project leader able to motivate the troups and get things done, etc... it's more a cathedral than a bazaar!

We had it working for Celestia, for a time, when I had more time, so yes it can work, but you still need to find the right people with the right skills and motivations.

So as concerns myself, I have made my decisions that I have also discussed with Chris L. earlier. Two years ago during Chris' previous hiding, I was VERY close to a proper fork, based on Celestia-FT. Now I will eventually start my own project about Cosmological Visualization which will strongly profit from experience with and code from Celestia, but as to its underlying framework, it will be entirely different and thus NOT to be seen as a continuation of Celestia proper.

Ok, so I guess CM is all about building a new community to recruit new contributors? or do you have other plans to get the ball rolling?

[t00fri]

I wasn't thinking of a closed source Celestia here,

Neither was I if you read my post well...

While clearly I agree that Celestia is Chris' "baby", your 80% seems a way too gracious number...

Sure, my 80% figure was not to be taken litteraly, but you have to admit that Chris did most of the heavy work. The GUI is just the icing on the cake, and I know that personnaly I have only touched marginaly to the core stuff: cel urls, multiview, utf8 and i18n, a bug fix here and there, some minor improvements... the full list is easily browsable on Ohloh.

For me it's NOT the quantity that counts. In any case you have contributed pretty cute ideas besides your code!
[ cel://urls, ...]

Our code galaxy/DSO code with all the culling framework stuff, the automatic rendering of the galaxies, the template production, the 1000 lines of PERL scripts to extract the galaxy data from 10 catalogs was half a year of hard work .. that was a significant contribution, indeed. And you will see nothing of it in your above browser tool...since Chris committed it all.

We had it working for Celestia, for a time,...

YES we did indeed! Didn't we?

Ok, so I guess CM is all about building a new community to recruit new contributors? or do you have other plans to get the ball rolling?

Exactly... I hope you will drop by from time to time

How was Japan??

Cheers,
Fridger