Hey, all. FooBar here.
It's been quite a while since I've been active on the boards, the servers, or the development community. Events in my life took precedence and I've had to spend my time on other things. Sadly, this post doesn't mark a return to the Tremulous community, as I will continue to have other priorities for the foreseeable future.
Recently I've been thinking a little bit about Tremulous development and the uncertainty surrounding the release date of 1.2. Now, I will be the first to argue against hard deadlines. In my opinion, "when it's done" is a perfectly acceptable timeframe for a project, especially an open-source project that is primarily developed by volunteers. This post is not a call for a deadline of any kind.
Instead, this is a call for a road map. Although many software projects do not have hard deadlines, most responsibly administered projects DO have a road map. By "road map", I mean a list of future version numbers with specific goals, improvements, and new features planned to be implemented for each version. The point of such a road map is to provide users with a sense of progress and developers with a sense of direction and limitation. In any project there is a strong tendency to say "just one more feature" over and over, and the next release never comes. The road map avoids this by assigning release points based on the implementation of specific features, rather than a general sense of "done-ness".
In addition, a road map can foster greater community involvement. There are many developers who would gladly contribute to Tremulous, if they knew what improvements were desired. With a road map, it is easy to see what is finished, what is being worked on (and by whom), and what still needs to be done.
I am not in communication with the current Dev Team, but I have looked on the forums and web sites and not seen a formal road map publicly posted anywhere. If a private road map does exist, I would like to respectfully suggest that it be made public, preferably in a wiki or other collaborative environment. If a road map does not exist, then I respectfully suggest that the creation of one should take priority over all other development work.
Tremulous needs a sense of direction. The community is floundering and stagnant. You are lost. I appeal to the development team to set out a road map for versions 1.2, 1.3, and beyond... and then stick to it.
We all know that 1.2 will be out "when it's done". It is time to define precisely what "done" means.
