[Bf-committers] Re: [Bf-blender-cvs] CVS commit: blender/release/scripts kloputils.py

[Matt Ebb]

On 12/07/2006, at 17:16 PM, jmsoler at free.fr wrote:

> Did you try to write to the original author before to do any
> modifs in his name ? Did you do the effort to wait at least
> 1 or 2 days  for an answer ?
>
> A long time ago, we decided  to  create "a python scripts team"
> to help and give advise to script writters, not to change their
> works without any autorisation (and without any notice that
> these changes was not made by the the original author), or, worse,
> erase it without any warning . Did you post any message on the
> bf-python list to get the opinion of this team ?

 From what I understand, the general policy for committers is to  
discuss changes to code with the 'module owners' or maintainers of  
that section of the Blender source. Since many of the scripts  
included with Blender are written by external authors I think that  
means that the module owners are the committers in the bpython API team.

I would consider a script that is GPL and resides in the Blender  
source tree to be part of Blender and 'owned' by Blender and the  
people who maintain it. Original script authors have given permission  
for this to happen by releasing the script under the GPL. Of course I  
don't mean 'owned' as in owning copyright, or even the rights to say  
they wrote it all, but 'owned' in the sense of taking care of it -  
i.e. Johnny and Geoffrey can be considered owners of the mesh code,  
and brecht of the UV code, even if they didn't write it originally  
themselves.

In Campbell's defence, he seems to have been doing a great job in  
checking and fixing unmaintained scripts. He's done well in making  
Blender's import/export options more solid, and well integrated into  
Blender's UI. The low quality of the included Python scripts in  
Blender is a real problem. I personally think many of the included  
scripts should be removed until they have been improved to a  
reasonable level - a lot of them look to me like fun experiments that  
only work half the time, not serious features meant for production,  
seemingly accepted without any checking, review process or  
documentation.

If the built-in Python scripts are going to emerge from their current  
backwater 2nd class status in Blender, they need to prove themselves  
by adhering to the same quality standards as the rest of the built-in  
Blender features and Campbell has been working on making this happen.  
Just like other maintainers, it shouldn't be necessary for him to ask  
permission from every original author in order to commit fixes. An  
analogy can be made with a C code maintainer having to ask original  
patch authors' authorisation to make fixes, which I think would be  
ridiculous.

Having said that, it would be great if more script authors were  
involved. Not just to be polite, but for practical reasons too, maybe  
original authors can provide insights, patches and help - delegation!  
All script authors that have scripts included should be encouraged to  
be on the bf-scripts mailing list, and keep in touch with any  
development on that script. They should understand the ramifications  
of the GPL and that if they submit their script to be bundled with  
Blender, that it will be maintained by other people. Perhaps a  
guideline could be for a bpython maintainer to do edits, improvements  
or other large changes to scripts, he should give a day's notice of  
it on the bf-scripts list too.

My thoughts anyway..

Cheers

Matt