Jon plans to quit maintaining freedoom

This might old news to some of you:
Jon Dowland posted at 01 July 2007 on his homepage about his disappointment with the project and his wish to quit it after the next release.
Read it here:
http://alcopop.org/log/2007/07/01/#freedoom-06

Greetings
Funduke

Wasn't news to me. Sad, but understandable. Has there actually been any notable progress in the last one or two years?

it is a real shame that this project hasn't been continued, I always loved the look and feel of these maps... maybe someone will continue in his place?

I think it can go on without him... Just may need to ask people with different skills to pitch in... It's not the end of it all...

hmm... need help?

Sprites are clearly the main sticking point. They take a lot of work to get looking good and animating well. Not too surprisingly, some of the outstanding sprites are amongst the hardest to do. I guess without people who have that rare combination of the required skills and enough time to do it, getting a complete Freedoom will continue to be a long, slow moving task. :(

Janitor said:

hmm... need help?

Obviously!

Greetings
Funduke

Jon said:

"Leileilol" informed me on the debian-games channel that freedoom was thus non-free. I contented this point: firstly, Debian's definition of freedom is in terms of copyright, rather than trademark: secondly, the games team had been advised to not be too worried about trademark infringements unless trademarks were being actively enforced (such as disney characters, etc.). Finally, I had not spent a lot of time examining the material so I was yet to be convinced it was a blatant trademark infringement and not just a generic cute fish.

Rather than attempt to convince me that this was a problem, or provide alternatives (that I would have accepted), he opted to part the channel, threaten to set me on ignore, and declare his intent to fork freedoom in another channel.

well boohoo

At least fraggle understands how much of a pandora's box it could be and removed it. You never know if someone made a Free game based on that fish then gets into major trouble with the studios behind Goldfish Warning!!, even if discolored (that didn't stop the fcc kids site to get threats from doraemon's creator)

in Free Software, there is no 'fair use'.

funduke said:

Obviously!

Greetings
Funduke

schweet! uh. now what?

Janitor said:

schweet! uh. now what?

I guess, it might be best, to download the 0.5 version and look for graphics, that haven't been done yet. If you found one, you should check here: http://freedoom.sourceforge.net/contributors/ , if it hasn't been donne in the meantime between the 0.5 release and now. Then you can create and contribute the graphic.

Greetings
Funduke

leileilol said:

well boohoo

At least fraggle understands how much of a pandora's box it could be and removed it. You never know if someone made a Free game based on that fish then gets into major trouble with the studios behind Goldfish Warning!!, even if discolored (that didn't stop the fcc kids site to get threats from doraemon's creator)

in Free Software, there is no 'fair use'.

My complaint wasn't that I wanted the pink fish in, it was the ludicrous way in which you behaved, which is pretty typical unfortunately.

We've received further hatemail since, along the lines of "I downloaded freedoom and zdoom and I can't figure out this IWAD thing you all suck".

Janitor said:

schweet! uh. now what?

Good question. I guess part of the problem is there is quite a barrier for potential contributors to even figure out what needs doing. I have a sort-of road map for the next release which I'll put up soon.

Not to drag on with a subject better left alone, but since when do fair use laws not apply to free software the same way they apply to everything else? If this were true, Wikipedia would be shut down immediately based only on the fact that there are a few million fair-use images being utilized on its pages. Wikipedia policy, which is in line with US law on the matter, allows use of such images (but strongly discourages it) when all the criteria for fair use are met.

Quasar said:

Not to drag on with a subject better left alone, but since when do fair use laws not apply to free software the same way they apply to everything else?

This doesn't answer your question, but Fair Use as a concept exists in US law but not in international law.

Were the images used as the basis for the sprites taken directly from the cartoon, or were they drawn by someone in the Doom community? I'm trying to understand how this can be construed as a either a copyright or trademark violation.

Jon said:
We've received further hatemail since, along the lines of "I downloaded freedoom and zdoom and I can't figure out this IWAD thing you all suck".

That's not hatemail, that's just people being retarded. Ignore them...

I think it could be construed as a parody if nothing else. But who cares, it's an old issue that's already been resolved, so dragging it up again is probably a bad idea.

I hope that FreeDoom does not completely die. It's a noble project.

Jon said:

My complaint wasn't that I wanted the pink fish in, it was the ludicrous way in which you behaved, which is pretty typical unfortunately.

We've received further hatemail since, along the lines of "I downloaded freedoom and zdoom and I can't figure out this IWAD thing you all suck".

Not as ludicrous as completely deleting discussion threads of Pink Fish and Teletubbies F_SKY like they never happened.

The 'hate mail' is merely a coincidence. If you're quitting over these small factors then wow, perhaps you are not taking the project seriously enough.

Fraggle is the better, more mature sensible maintainer, anyway. He actually listens =)

leileilol said:

Not as ludicrous as completely deleting discussion threads of Pink Fish and Teletubbies F_SKY like they never happened.

The 'hate mail' is merely a coincidence. If you're quitting over these small factors then wow, perhaps you are not taking the project seriously enough.

Fraggle is the better, more mature sensible maintainer, anyway. He actually listens =)

Actually I deleted those threads. They were things that I were already aware of and planning to do, so I didn't see any point in discussing them.

If anything, Jon is the more mature maintainer :-)

If people have to act immature, or fuckshitting stupid, the best thing to do is ignore them.  If Leililol is acting stupid and immature, then ignore it, no one worth caring about is going to side with him if he acts so childish.
If you are tired of working on FreeDoom because it is boring or slow, SAY THAT. It's sure alot better than all this drama about "people doing immature or stupid things"...

As I said before, the project Doesn't NEED him, things will be fine without him...

I disagree in the strongest possible terms.

The one thing that Freedoom needs more than anything is a strong maintainer who can dedicate time to working on the project and keeping interest alive.

When Freedoom started, I was studying at university and so had a lot of time to dedicate to dealing with new submissions, running the project, etc. You may remember that back then there was much more activity. Since then the project has stagnated to the point where there are hardly any people contributing now. I partly blame myself for this because I now have a job and nowhere near as much time to dedicate as I used to.

It's a vicious cycle. People don't want to contribute to what they perceive to be a "dead" project, and that perception comes from the activity they see in the project. A strong leader can offset that perception by continuing to work on improving the project and keeping it "alive".

It's rather a thankless job being a maintainer of a project like this. You can put in a lot of work and all you get back is shitty emails from idiots that contact you just to tell you that they hate you for no apparent reason. Jon has contributed a lot to this project and I am deeply grateful for his work, but with people like you who seem to think that he isn't needed or wanted, I don't blame him for wanting to leave.

fraggle said:

When Freedoom started, I was studying at university and so had a lot of time to dedicate to dealing with new submissions, running the project, etc.

That's funny, because studying at university is the primary reason why I don't have time to contribute.

leileilol said:

If you're quitting over these small factors then wow, perhaps you are not taking the project seriously enough.

Ridiculous!

Fredrik said:

That's funny, because studying at university is the primary reason why I don't have time to contribute.

Maybe in Sweden, but I think in the rest of the world studying at university is always associated with a lot of spare time :)

Freedoom is something people contribute to primarily for fun and as part of their hobby. If it stops being fun for whatever reason then the person concerned is absolutely entitled to quit. It doesn't matter what anyone else's opinion of that decision is. If the thing you do it for no longer exists, why do it?

Personally, I think if Jon has quit then it's a real shame for the project but if he is happy that his decision is right, then it's right. I guess the outstanding hope I have is that perhaps he may reconsider and decide that his decision may not have been as right as he thought.

Enjay said:

Personally, I think if Jon has quit then it's a real shame for the project but if he is happy that his decision is right, then it's right. I guess the outstanding hope I have is that perhaps he may reconsider and decide that his decision may not have been as right as he thought.

Exactly, and that's not what I'm complaining about. What I'm complaining about is that he is giving these bullshit excuses rathar than the real reason, that he's lazy and doesn't want to do it anymore.
What I would hope though, is that before he leaves entirely, he finds some replacement for himself...

cchristianPunckgzsor said:

Exactly, and that's not what I'm complaining about. What I'm complaining about is that he is giving these bullshit excuses rathar than the real reason, that he's lazy and doesn't want to do it anymore.
What I would hope though, is that before he leaves entirely, he finds some replacement for himself...

And if you had been paying attention you'd know that person is fraggle.

cchristianPunckgzsor said:

the real reason, that he's lazy and doesn't want to do it anymore.

Maybe that isen't the real reason at all, rather your just assuming it is and putting words into his mouth.

Anyway I really sympathize with this project and it's goals, and I really feel as if I should contribute ... but in all honesty I just don't see how I could be useful at all. I could do a secretarial sort of role -- shifting through all the emails and seeing whats actually worth reading ;).

But I don't enjoy/have the effort to make maps, I could probably draw sprites but their quality would be so awfully bad it would laughable, I have no idea how to use/create/modify any sort of computer code for any program so... I'm not sure what else there is I could do.

EDIT: Spelling

Mancubus II said:

And if you had been paying attention you'd know that person is fraggle.

I must have missed that part... Well then, why is there still a debate?

EDIT: you know? sorry... I guess I shouldn't be so annoyed by the fact he's giving these lame excuses... it's his choice after all...
Good luck with whatever it is you are going to do instead then Jon, and goodbye...

I think Jon has done a brilliant job of managing Free Doom in his spare time.

I just want to say thanks to Jon for putting up with things like random hate mail and the frustrations of managing a project of this size, and still managing to show some organization and release a build once in a while :).

It doesnt seem theres like a huge amount of enthusiasm for this project anyway, However I just tried freedoom for the first time, and I can make sprites, so maybe i could help this jawn out a bit.

cchristianPunckgzsor said:

Exactly, and that's not what I'm complaining about. What I'm complaining about is that he is giving these bullshit excuses rathar than the real reason, that he's lazy and doesn't want to do it anymore.

It is my intention to stop maintaining freedoom after the next release. However that's not because of hatemail or armchair critics such as yourself and I've never said it was. I just bundled up the two bits of freedoom info into the one post.

I find it hard to think of myself as "lazy" with regards freedoom, a volunteer project. It's not like I have an obligation.

The reason I plan to give it up is I'm not sure the project has any focus or direction anymore. We've been going a long time, and we've achieved some pretty cool things in that time: The boom engines are in the "main" section of Debian rather than "contrib"; we have a pretty neat build system; some of our resources (but by no means all) are something to be proud of.

Some of the original goals that we had for the project are pretty much void now: one of the major motivations for many people at the start was to create a complete set of hi-res textures so there was something for ports to support. That didn't really take off and most of our patch submissions ended up being lo-res only.

What I think the project needs is a more defined and interesting goal than just "100% resources". I'd like to attract some talented mappers, for example. I think of freedoom as being a community project, but we've not got anywhere near the attention or talent that some other, shorter-term community projects have. I was very impressed with lots of congestion 1024, for example.

I'd like people who have not been a part of the doom community and are exposed to freedoom to get something which sort-of sums things up: a demonstration of the tricks, gameplay types, etc. that have been come up with over the years.

One thing that I think would attract mappers might be having a bit of self-consistency. I think the zombies are good but need touching up. The demon is great (but needs finishing). The imp sucks unfortunately, and imps are a core bit of most maps.

So it basically comes down to community building. I suppose this is one place where people can help me carve out some objectives, for the next release at least. From the outside, how does the freedoom project look, for potential volunteers? I think the website needs a load of attention. The barrier to contribution is too high.

(I think I'll start a new topic for this)

PS thank those of you in this thread who have left kind words.