[ubuntu-us-ma] Ubuntu Gaming Team

Sat Jun 13 19:14:21 UTC 2009

Hey everyone,

Sorry i dropped off the face of the planet for a while. I am back now! I
have heard all of the concerns, and i hope i can address them now. I am open
to change the team, and i want to sincerely apologize for all the confusion
and misunderstanding. One of the first changes i made to the team was
linking to the Debian Games Team and Freedesktop Games from the wiki and
launchpad page.

People noticed that although i stated that the team would only be working
from a marketing/advocacy standpoint, i went on about an advantage to FOSS
gaming is that code and content can be reused, but that was not to say that
*we* would be dealing with any actual game development. There was a lot of
talk about assigning bugs to the team and dealing with bugs through the
team. I do not think this team should have that focus at all. As said
before, the Debian Games Team can already handle that. What this team can do
is tap into the Ubuntu community which i am sure is full of gamers who want
to get involved with spreading the love. Members of this team can pass ideas
onto developers, and bridge connections between users (which most of the
team should be made up of) and the Debian Games Team and Freedesktop Games,
where appropriate, of course. There are also a lot of things that we will do
that i don't believe falls under the scope of the Debian Games Team or
Freedesktop Games. fundraisers, game tournaments, creating an Ubuntu Gaming
Clan, etc.

I'm having trouble responding to all of the concerns, so could someone list
all of the issues that have been raised so far in a bulleted list if the
above doesn't cover everything already?

The last question is what to do next. Is a new name really necessary at this
point? And if so, what should the new name be?

On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 13:36, Daniel Hollocher <danielhollocher at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hey Danny,
> So, where are your feelings at after all the discussion regarding your
> Ubuntu Gaming Team?  I feel like Emmet had the best response, and was
> thinking of following through with it.  I wanted to check in, see
> where you were at.
>
> Dan
>
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 3:07 AM, Emmet Hikory <persia at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >
> > Martin Owens wrote:
> > >> Some confusion maybe seen from the naming, but I see no real issue.
> The
> > >> team members who wish too can look at and work with more specific
> Ubuntu
> > >> issues and act as a conduit between the teams of both distributions to
> > >> make things better. Many teams work in this way and I see no real
> > >> competition or massive problems and a hopeful flow of information
> would
> > >> only be productive.
> > >
> > > So long as you can join their mailing list and give the enough homage,
> > > I'm sure you can avoid political rumblings.
> > >
> > > It would be good to be able to join interested people from Ubuntu
> > > communities to interested groups in Debian without fear that the people
> > > will get caught in a "war".
> >
> >    Something is unclear here.
> >
> >    The "Debian Games Team" consists of Debian Developers, Ubuntu
> > Developers, and other interested parties, and spends a fair bit of time
> > working on games for *both* Debian and Ubuntu.  There is no separation
> > that involves coordination between groups, no need to "involve" Debian
> > groups, and little value to a "conduit".
> >
> >    The history of this team includes the previous definition of an
> > Ubuntu Games Team that spent time maintaining games in Ubuntu.  After
> > some discussion, it seemed sensible to pool efforts, and the Ubuntu team
> > was merged with the Debian team.  As the vast majority of the work needs
> > to be uploaded for both distributions, and Ubuntu has a mechanism to
> > accept an upload prepared for Debian (where Debian has no corresponding
> > means to accept an upload prepared for Ubuntu), the resulting changes
> > are nearly always uploaded to Debian directly (although there are some
> > exceptions due to differences in freeze cycles between the
> > distributions, etc.), and all are tracked in a common revision control
> > system.  Work is done to add new games, fix bugs (reported against both
> > Debian and Ubuntu), and improve the user experience in installing,
> > using, and configuring games.
> >
> >    So, based on the announcement (1), I see three areas that the
> > proposed new team intends to carry on activities.
> >
> > A: Work to generally improve the state of Free and Open-Source games and
> > the infrastructure to support game development.
> >
> >    This work is probably best done in association with the Freedesktop
> > Games team (2), and if interested people work directly as part this
> > team, rather than as a separate "Ubuntu Gaming Team", they should be
> > able to attract a wider following, collaborating directly with many
> > parties, rather than restricting themselves to users of a single
> > distribution.
> >
> > B: Work to improve the state of games in Ubuntu
> >
> >    As noted above, there is an existing team to accomplish this, and
> > having yet another team just leads to confusion.  Anyone who wishes to
> > help fix bugs, coordinate with upstreams, or get more games into Ubuntu
> > ought pursue joining the Debian Games team (3).  There was a previous
> > effort to create an Ubuntu-specific team, and the experience of all
> > those involved was that it was far superior to drop that team and
> > collaborate with Debian.
> >
> > C: Use of the improvements above to drive advocacy efforts
> >
> >    Without the work above (which is better done as part of the groups
> > listed, rather than in cooperation with them (there is no coordination
> > overhead if there is no distinction), there's not much to do here.  As
> > the work above proceeds, I don't see significant value in restricting
> > such advocacy efforts to a subset of the general Ubuntu Marketing team
> > (4): it makes more sense to drive a combined message including all the
> > potential advantages, and again, reduces any coordination overhead if
> > there is not team separation that requires coordination.
> >
> >    So, I'll also ask for either the renaming or abolishment of the
> > mooted "Ubuntu Gaming Team".  Yes, there is a lot of work to do to
> > improve the state of gaming in Ubuntu, but there is significantly more
> > scope for progress by working with the existing groups that have
> > identical goals, a high risk of communication loss by creating a
> > separate team that then requires coordination and extra communication
> > paths, some risk of alienating those already engaged in the work by not
> > including them from the outset (or even discussing the potential
> > creation of the team with them), and potential for confusion to both new
> > contributors and end-users who may then not be sure of the appropriate
> > contact with questions (as most things in areas A and B above would be
> > better asked to the existing teams).
> >
> >    Now it may be that the existing teams would benefit from
> > documentation assistance to make the nature of the work done more clear,
> > in which case I'd encourage those prepared to document the current state
> > of things, and better highlight best practices and procedures for
> > further progress to contact the XDG-games team, the Debian Games team ,
> > or the Ubuntu Marketing team with proposals for documentation changes to
> > meet the desired goals.
> >
> > 1:
> http://pinstack.blogspot.com/2009/04/announcing-ubuntu-gaming-team.html
> > 2: http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Games/
> > 3: http://wiki.debian.org/Games
> > 4: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam
> >
> > --
> > Emmet HIKORY
> >
> >
> > --
> > Ubuntu-us-ma mailing list
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>
>
>
> --
> In science and in mind, the impossible and the hasn't-happened-yet are
> indistinguishable.
>

-- 
http://www.google.com/profiles/danny.piccirillo
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