ProtoCiv: porting Freeciv to Python

[Bent C Dalager]

If you're saying that you've come to the realization that volunteer
programers on a project with which you only have a passing interest
won't follow your orders and do whatever you say, I'd say pointing that
out is less like "denigration" and more like "common goddamn sense."

It is, never the less, worth pointing out. It would seem that Brandon
entered the scene with an idea that OSS developers might be incredibly
useful to him for some reason or other. Other game developers might
very well have the same idea. When Brandon finds out that this is not
the case and describes in some detail why OSS won't do the job for
him, than this can certainly be useful for other game developers to
learn so that don't have to spend 6 months figuring out the exact same
thing themselves.

The conclusion may seem obvious to _you_ but this is no guarantee that
everyone else also possesses this knowledge. OSS is being hailed as
the second coming, and it comes as no surprise therefore that some
people might be deluded into thinking they could harness this power to
cure cancer overnight or land a man on Mars by 2005.

Cheers
Bent D

 

[Bent C Dalager]

Cygwin is a horrible horrible
way to run things on Windows, and I'd like to take this time to insult the
mothers of everyone who has ever made their Linux application run on
Windows using only Cygwin.

I've always thought of Cygwin as

1) an excellent way to run the Unix-like tools that I know and love and

2) a useful intermediate step while porting an app to Windows.

Now, except as a quick first step to achieving (2) I don't really know
why anyone would put much effort into "porting to CygWin". Isn't part
of the point that most things will just automatically work under
CygWin so that you get (1) pretty much for free?

Cheers
Bent D

 

[Anthony Baxter]

I've always thought of Cygwin as

1) an excellent way to run the Unix-like tools that I know and love and

2) a useful intermediate step while porting an app to Windows.

Ah. But with MinGW on top of Cygwin, you get to use Unix tools, yet build
genuine Windows apps. Best of both worlds, for those of us who can't stand
the one enormous GUI style of software development.

 

[chris]

You have some deep-seated need for smootheness? I see no a priori value in
smoothness.

And that is I think the base of all of your problems.

(sorry, long-term lurker feels urge to put in my 2c)

MrJeff

 

[WTH]

Sadly, Brandon doesn't 'realize' this at all, he apparently believes that if
the OSS movement does not do what he hoped it would that it's basically
*crap*.

This is the crux of every problem Brandon has with educated adults. If
something doesn't work out his way, or if people don't give him what he
wants (this week's wants that is), or he doesn't finish yet another hair
brained project, the problem is always somewhere other than himself.

He's the unluckiest genius-design crack-developer of games ever...

WTH

 

[Joe Francia]

You're trying to put this weird spin on your public displays of
embarassment is not really working. Trying and failing is a part of
life. Trying and failing, over and over again, consistently, despite
insisting quite urgently on how important you are to a community, is
starting to get suspicious.




And those who never taste success should probably come to the
realization, eventually, that they are doing something wrong.

This reminds me of the old expression: "A winner never quits. A quitter
never wins. But if you never win and never quit, you're a fucking idiot."

 

[WTH]

This reminds me of the old expression: "A winner never quits. A quitter

never wins. But if you never win and never quit, you're a fucking idiot."

I've seen that anti-motivational poster . LOL.

WTH

 

[Peter Ashford]

I don't. But that's not going to stop me from denigrating them for being
incapable of fulfillng the kinds of projects I have in mind.

That's like criticising a high class restraunt for not serving burgers.
If they don't propose to solve your particular needs, criticising them
for not doing so is stupid and redundant.

Many OS projects have aims which they fail to reach (often "completion"
is one of those) and it is fair to criticise them for those failings.
However it is utterly myopic to criticise them for not reaching aims to
which they don't aspire - like being your bunch of personal slaves.

It would just as dumb as me criticising you for not advancing OS
software - you've never intended to, don't care, so the criticism would
be stupid.

Peter.

 

[Servé Lau]

Erik Max Francis <[email protected]> wrote in message

As far as I've been able to discover, life is just one long cocktail
party in Brandon's honour. So it isn't exactly surprising that
everyone appears to him as just another waiter with a tray of drinks.

Well said, that's just how he sounds.
I think I'm gonna create a new sig

"I won't stop denigrating OS people for being incapable of fulfillng the
kinds of projects I have in mind
Brandon J. Van Every"

 

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Is there something fundamentally *wrong* with recognizing how useless people
are to your purposes?

Well said, that's just how he sounds.
I think I'm gonna create a new sig

"I won't stop denigrating OS people for being incapable of fulfillng the
kinds of projects I have in mind
Brandon J. Van Every"

Except that I didn't say that, so it wouldn't be within your legal rights to
quote me as having said such. If you want to quote me, you're going to have
to *quote* me, not paraphrase me in your own idiom.

--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.

 

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Partially implementing stuff.


Are you applying to be a martyr, St. Brandon?

I'm very much alive, thank you.

No, because you dumped the project because it was boring.

You're a fool then. What's your school of advice, keep working on things no
matter how much of a boring waste of time they become?

This may kill any credit you may have had with people.

Getting "credit" was a goal? News to me.

You state that you will follow only those who fail after putting their own
money on projects?

Read it again, and put up or shut up. If you don't have the balls to allow
postmortems of your *own* projects, don't expect me to care about your flak.

 

[Peter Ashford]

Is there something fundamentally *wrong* with recognizing how useless people
are to your purposes?

*Recognising* that people aren't useful for your purposes is sensible.
*Criticising* people for not being useful for your purposes when they've
never claimed or aspired to be is dumb.

 

[Brandon J. Van Every]

It is, never the less, worth pointing out. It would seem that Brandon
entered the scene with an idea that OSS developers might be incredibly
useful to him for some reason or other. Other game developers might
very well have the same idea. When Brandon finds out that this is not
the case and describes in some detail why OSS won't do the job for
him, than this can certainly be useful for other game developers to
learn so that don't have to spend 6 months figuring out the exact same
thing themselves.

The conclusion may seem obvious to _you_ but this is no guarantee that
everyone else also possesses this knowledge. OSS is being hailed as
the second coming, and it comes as no surprise therefore that some
people might be deluded into thinking they could harness this power to
cure cancer overnight or land a man on Mars by 2005.

Agreed, and more specifically, there is a huge *cultural divide* between
most OSS developers and proprietary commercial developers who simply want to
add some OSS "to get the boring bits over with." There are also huge
cultural divides between Linux and Windows developers, and again between
commercial game developers and hobbyist game developers.

These cultural divides are what make the vast majority of people useless to
my purposes, not some table waiter fetish as some other poster indicated.
The problem is, the OSS people are inevitably going to pursue *their* goals,
and there is not much overlap between their goals and *my* goals. They
don't think about problems the same way, they don't work the same way, they
don't manage the same way, they don't ship to the same schedules, they don't
apply the same degree of seriousness to various endeavors... the list goes
on and on and on. OSS people are doing "their thing," and it is not my
thing. Even though, in the abstract, I'm perfectly willing to use BSD style
licenses as part of my ongoing development.

In fact, one can identify the locus of problems by simply asking, "How many
OSS game developers are willing to work on something with a BSD license?"
Precious few. Most BSD licenses out there are not game software. BSD is a
good indicator that someone cares about commercial concerns.

 

[Brandon J. Van Every]

That's like criticising a high class restraunt for not serving burgers.
If they don't propose to solve your particular needs, criticising them
for not doing so is stupid and redundant.

Referring to Bent's astute post, it's more like criticizing an OSS
restaurant that says it serves a lot of things, but in fact doesn't.
"Cross-platform, so long as your platform is Linux."

--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.

 

[James Keasley]

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Hash: SHA1

Agreed, and more specifically, there is a huge *cultural divide* between
most OSS developers and proprietary commercial developers who simply want to
add some OSS "to get the boring bits over with."

Yeah, it indicates that you are a lazy **** who wants to get something for
nothing, if you want to use someone elses work that you haven't commissioned
from them, find what you want from someone who isn't fussed, and has used the
BSD license, people who have used the GPL have done so cos they *don't*
want some software company ripping off their hard work and not contributing
anything back.

In fact, one can identify the locus of problems by simply asking, "How many
OSS game developers are willing to work on something with a BSD license?"
Precious few. Most BSD licenses out there are not game software. BSD is a
good indicator that someone cares about commercial concerns.

So is the use of the GPL, the people who use that care that commercial
concerns can't come along, take their hard work, file off a few serial
numbers and flog for $BIG_NUM. If that pisses you off what of it, I
suspect that the writers of the software care about as much as I do.

- --
James jamesk[at]homeric[dot]co[dot]uk

I replaced the headlights on my car with strobe lights. Now it looks like
I'm the only one moving. (Steven Wright)
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[Jim Dabell]

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
[snip]

OSS people are doing "their thing," and it is not my thing.

[snip]

So don't try working with OSS. Open-source developers typically work under
different constraints to proprietary developers, and you will almost
certainly be unsuccessful if you attempt to impose a different set of
constraints upon them or assume they have the same priorities as
proprietary developers.

If you need people to work for you, hire them.


[Removing comp.lang.python from followups; this isn't anything to do with
Python.]

 

[Andrew Dalke]

Brandon J. Van Every:

Is there something fundamentally *wrong* with recognizing how useless people
are to your purposes?

Nope. But if you blabber it to everyone in the manner you have
then when you do need someone else's help you're less likely to
get it.

It's made even worse when you make claims related to your
profession (like "Even 12 years ago, "Computer Graphics: Principles
and Practice" didn't teach texture mapping. Along came DOOM.")
which is proveably false for several reasons
(http://groups.google.com/[email protected].
pas.earthlink.net&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain )
because then people tend to remind others of your follies to show
that your knowledge is less than you think it is.

Andrew
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Erik Max Francis]

Referring to Bent's astute post, it's more like criticizing an OSS
restaurant that says it serves a lot of things, but in fact doesn't.
"Cross-platform, so long as your platform is Linux."

Unix, not Linux. You may not care about the non-Linux Unix, but the
developers do. You characterizing it as Linux only is just ignorance.
There are different levels of portability; the fact that Windows
portability may not be high on some peoples' priorities doesn't mean
that their code still can't be widely portable.

But, of course, even that assertion is wrong to begin with. Freeciv.org
indicates that there are both Cygwin and win32 native ports. You're
just complaining that there isn't a .NET port, something which the
developers never promised (and probably rightly don't care about at this
point).

As usual, you are all bluster and no content.

 

[W. Citoan]

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.games.development.programming.misc.]

It is, never the less, worth pointing out. It would seem that Brandon
entered the scene with an idea that OSS developers might be incredibly

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

useful to him for some reason or other. Other game developers might
very well have the same idea. When Brandon finds out that this is not
the case and describes in some detail why OSS won't do the job for

^^^

him, than this can certainly be useful for other game developers to
learn so that don't have to spend 6 months figuring out the exact same
thing themselves.

The conclusion may seem obvious to _you_ but this is no guarantee that
everyone else also possesses this knowledge. OSS is being hailed as

^^^

the second coming, and it comes as no surprise therefore that some
people might be deluded into thinking they could harness this power to
cure cancer overnight or land a man on Mars by 2005.

OSS developers != OSS

While "OSS is being hailed as the second coming", nobody is claiming
that people you aren't paying are going to do what you want, when you
want, and how you want. That was Brandon's complaint.

People develop OSS for their own reasons (personal or corporate). They
don't do it to provide free labor for the asking. Anyone who doesn't
see that as obvious is severely lacking in common sense.

- W. Citoan

 

[R. Alan Monroe]

You're a fool then. What's your school of advice, keep working on things no
matter how much of a boring waste of time they become?

"Being able to finish something is a form of expertise." --Brandon Van
Every

http://groups.google.
com/groups?q=finish+project+%22brandon+van+every%22+group:comp.games.
development.
*&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=3f6ab8de%40shknews01&rnum=9

Alan