[Bf-committers] irc meeting sunday march 23

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi all,

At irc.freenode.net #blendercoders we had another informal meeting last  
sunday march 16. Instead of meeting minutes I maintained a sort-of  
whiteboard, where the discussion topics were written down. You can find  
it here:

http://www.blender.org/docs/rt.htm

I still regret not having more time and energy to coordinate all  
efforts. Nevertheless, the irc meetings continue to be very useful, as  
a weekly reflection on what's going on, and what the topics are to work  
at.

Apart from the excellent work people here do already, there remain  
three crucial points of attention:

1- Reducing complexity
Maintaining Blender at the level NaN did is impossible, in fact NaN was  
already struggling with it a lot... try to build and maintain a full  
featured 3d tool, rendering, game engine, logic editing, players,  
web-plugin, Publisher keys, etc.
We really have to look at what we *can* do, not at what we *should* do.  
And that can be solved by limiting the amount of features in Blender  
that will be supported, based at the interests and energy of the coders  
here. An old concept (in NaN) already was splitting off the game engine  
and game creation tools, into a separate appplication. We should  
seriously consider that.
On a related topic we can also consider the internal renderer not as  
prime focus... leaving our Blender project to essentially be an  
integrated 3d modeling, animation and 'lay-out' (scenes creation) tool.

2- Focus
Next to 'reducing', it is important to agree on a vision and proposals  
on what actually to work at. This based of course at the people's  
personal incentives. But also based at project proposals, documentation  
or planning.

3- Leadership
The best people to lead the projects still are the ones who actually do  
substantial coding themselves, inspiring others to jump in as well.  
Many people out there still hope or think I'll be the best suited to do  
so! But I keep waiting for others to take the lead, allowing me to work  
at all secundary organisation topics... I still cannot afford even to  
consider to do coding again, there are too many issues in the  
day-to-day management of the foundation that distract me all the time.
So, don't hesitate to raise your voice and make demands!

These topics remain relevant, also for discussion here and at IRC.

Next meeting: sunday 23, 16-18 CET, 10-12 EST, 07-09 PST. I've decided  
to post this at this maillist now, instead of only inviting the people  
with cvs write access. Everyone who's interested to actively  
participate in Blender projects is invited!

-Ton-


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Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton@blender.org