On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 19:34 +0100, Richard Spindler wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> The Plan
>
> 1. Get the community together
>
> The community of developers today is very small and spread, and
> cinelerra has no road map.
>
> First thing to do is gather this people to discuss about the future of
> cinelerra, identify the main flaws and its solution, make a plan to
> organize the place and set up for new features.
>
> Cinelerra needs a project leader, an interface designer, and more
> people with defined roles that should be choosen on this meeting.
>
> Developers of other softwares are also welcome. Cinelerra is, so far,
> the only video free editing video editing software with professional
> approach, but it could share a lot of things with other software, such
> as effects, for example, that shoul be usable in any video software,
> just like we have LADSPA for audio. There is already a video effect
> standar called Frei0r that cinelerra does not support.
>
>
> 2. Diagnostics
>
> Cinelerra code is not very well documented, so few people have the
> idea of how tuff is to deal with it. Second step is to see what must
> be done so we can invite more people to colaborate with the code.
> Documentation, refactoring, etc. It also has to work on the API so
> other people can write plugins and effects.
>
> In other words, lots of work that are a pain in the ass but has to be
> done in order to advance properly. And passion has a limit. There must
> be people getting money to work on that.
>
I was with you up to that point. Money is the root of all evil. It
will totally corrupt the process. If you want money go to Micro$oft and
develop for them. If you don't, (and I do realise that yopu may not
have been referring to yourself), then why would you assume something
like this? If this is to be a true cooperative effort, then let it be a
volunteer effort.
>
> 3. Make a plan
>
> Based on the diagnostics and on researches with users and other video
> editing tools, define how cinelerra will look and act in a not so
> distant future. With that goal in mind, make a reasonable plan to make
> it happen.
>
To "do it right" people should decide what it will include and what is
needed to be a serious editor 2 or 3 years down the road. (We've had
plenty of suggestions, as we all know,... maybe there'll be others).
Then a team must figure out how to make that happen. With that secure
plan in place then implementation can start.
> 3. Set up a core development team
>
> No secret here. Few people dedicated to make it happen, including an
> interface designer.
>
> 4. Bounties
>
> The core team can offer bounties for parts of the job they choose.
> This will attracat more developers to the community.
>
I disagree.
> 5. Attract contributors
>
> Mantain a nice looking website, a wiki, tools for easy translation of
> the interface and of the online documentation, etc. are goos
> strategies to attract people to contribute. Its also important to find
> people to package the software for different distributions.
>
Fine a wiki for the developers and a web site are good ideas.
Developers may come and go and getting them up to speed on the project
requires documentation and possibly training. Internal communications
is vital and every developer should be in almost constant contact with
the group to make sure everybody's on the same project and knows what is
going on. This synergistic culture is vital to such a team. It's in
everybody's interest that all the other team members understand the
project perfectly. Time spent bringing a new member up to speed is not
wasted. A developer's bulletin board is essential. Well defined
standard interfaces for code is also essential and design changes must
be tracked and approved by the core development team. Things like that
ensure a solid program.
I could get behind a project like that.
--
Regards,
Fred Williams
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