Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>]

On Wed, Mar 15, 2006 at 09:42:16AM -0800, Andrew wrote:
> I have a question for both candidates.
> 
> What, if anything, are you going to do about getting additional grimoire
> gurus?  Is this a priority, and if so, where does it rank in comparison to
> other goals?

It is a priority, as we definitely don't have enough developers to
maintain 4000+ spells in detail. The result of this is that what gets
maintained is a) the popular stuff and b) the niche stuff that one of
our developers uses. Overall spell quality has improved a lot over the
last two years, but there's obviously still a long way to go.
One of the main reasons (besides apparently perforce) that drives off
potential developers is that the grimoire is big, and the sections are
big. We need to advertise that becoming the maintainer of one spell - or
a couple of spells - is a perfectly valid and welcome option for new
contributors.
What's most important to get new developers is of course getting new
users. For that we need to continue improving the quality of the
grimoires so that new users don't get put off because their favorite
software fails to cast. Thus, improving the quality with the developer
manpower we have now has higher priority than looking for new developers
for me, except for the above suggestion.

-- 
Arwed v. Merkatz                              Source Mage GNU/Linux developer
                                                    http://www.sourcemage.org