Re: The PenguinPlay project and the name controversy

[Christian Reiniger <warewolf@mayn.de>]

Ok,

there have already been some thoughts about this new proposal, and I
generally agree with them (Note: For those who didn't get all the mails - I
put them on
http://sunsite.auc.dk/penguinplay/irc-meetings/nextmeeting.html )

I mainly supported the "one gamedev toolkit" idea because of two reasons:

(1) game programmers are likely to be confused if they find many competing
projects. However this is a non-issue if all these projects cooperate with
each other and write their code to be as interoperable as possible.

(2) All of the projects currently out there are short of manpower, some not
very much, others critically. Merging projects would concentrate the
available developers on *one* project, eliminating redundancy etc.

Well, much of the redundancy could be eliminated if the developers of all
projects would continuously stay in contact with each other, lending ideas
and code. This will however still leave us short of manpower (less serious,
but the problem stays). So I suggest we give out a "call for developers"
soon.
It's clear that we're not ready for prime time yet, so it's too early to
initiate a big discussion with professional game developers right now, but
stating something like

"The linux game development efforts are now being reorganized. After that
we are ready to seriously get into gears. But we need more people for that"

is IMHO the right thing to do now.


Ok, next issue. Adrian pointed out that the Meta-project should *not* be
PenguinPlay. He's pointing out some very serious issues and IMHO he's
completely right.  Ian?


As for the "duties" of the Meta-project, it should host a set of mailing
lists (general/gfx/sound/net/input/??) dedicated for inter-project
coordination/cooperation/idea exchange issues and, if possible, all
developers from th gamedev projects should be subscribed to at least the
general list.

Oh, and the Meta-project should also push the developers to frequently
update their docs (Ouch, noo, please, ouuch, help, sorry, SORRY ;)


Cu
	Christian
 --

Microsoft: What API do you have to use today?