Hi Robert, hi all, I agree with 99% of what you say. And I would like to insist on the fact that visivility (marketing/web site/etc.) is a weak point of OSG. It's really too bad since OSG has a great source code and great community. Maybe some threads would be started about that? For instance search engine's visibility, or web site content/maintenance/appearance/whatever, or on general marketing/advertisement. Maybe donations would be used to pay some advertisments?
Where I don't totally agree is on the game market. I guess we mainly are engineers/researchers, not marketing professionals; so concentrating on OSG's features is logical. Of course we have to keep OSG's strongest points. But the game market has to be infiltrated by OSG! The benefit for OSG would be to have a different use for its code, and thus giving it more varied contributions. Why is there so few people wanting to work on osgAudio, and osgPhysics? Why did we have to wait so long before osgWidget and osgAnimation's integration? IMHO, the game market is an (the?) answer. We could use the power of vis-sim and virtual-reality features in games, and vice-versa. Remember that it's awfully difficult to get from "very good" to "perfect", whereas it's easy to go from "nothing" or "very bad" to "acceptable". At least a few things about gaming would provide us much. And as I already told, I'm ready to help for a bit of management, but I'm also ready to help on marketing/visibility/etc. Sukender, determined to fight the weak points ;) PVLE - Lightweight cross-platform game engine - http://pvle.sourceforge.net/ Le Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:35:01 +0100, Robert Osfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit: > HI All, > > I remain curious about the possibility of finding funding routes that > would support a dedicated dev team, although also a bit sceptical > about the ability for us to draw in enough cash to cover a full time > salary for engineer just dedicated to OSG infrastructure/build > binaries/website/promotion etc. > > Like Paul mentioned we already do have consultant engineers that make > living off OpenSceneGraph related services, and these services do > often entail directly contributing to the OSG, > osgTerrain/VirtualPlanetBuilder/PdfReader/gecok plugin etc. are all > examples of this type of funded open source development. The OSG book > is also an example of something that had seed funding that helped make > it happen. The income for consulting/training/support also allows to > put in extra time doing general OSG support work, but this is > effectively in our spare time, it's not work we get paid for so there > is limit on how much time can be put in in this way. > > The OSG also gets a lot of contributions from the community in terms > of build support/dev support/development work/testing, so in effect > lots of companies/groups/individuals are putting effort into the OSG > ecosystem. The OSG has a huge number of contributors (over 350) which > is a testament to how much contributions do happen. Such > contributions tends to rather ad-hoc though, such is the nature of > distributed, completely open development. I can't control the flow of > submissions in, I can only control how they get merged with our > version control system. I also can't dictate what users do in terms > of dev work, not that I want to, but it's a very different > relationship between a conventional software team manager and his > engineers, the only control I have is over what gets checked into > svn/trunk, anything else I want to achieve has to be done with good > will and co-operation. > > This current status quo of community/developer isn't perfect, and for > a long while I wanted to have an engineer that I could manage > full-time and assign to all the project tasks that slip through the > net, or only see patchy support, such as providing continuity on tasks > like creating binaries are areas that weak. The two problems to > tackle to make this happen are 1) Funding 2) Finding the right > engineer. I do however think that finding sufficient and consistent > funding is pretty difficult to do for a pure support engineer role > though. > > Realistically I think we'd need a couple of companies with deep > pockets, or one big company/body that saw strategic benefit from > funding OSG dev/support. Such a sugar daddy arrangement is something > I hoped for and pursued in the early days of going full-time on the > OSG, but now I just concentrate on what I know does work in terms of a > open source business model - consulting/training/support. I am a bit > of risk adverse character so I've deliberated kept my overheads low, > and avoided the temptation of pushing to expand into a larger company, > but so far keeping small and tackling things little by little has > proven to be a pretty robust business model (I've been in business > since March 2001). > > Personally I feel that the current OSG ecosystem is pretty solid, our > software is de-facto standard scene graph in professionally graphics > markets, and the community is lively and constructive. Areas where we > are weak is not in the pure software dev and community side, it's more > getting binaries together, and polishing of our external front to the > rest of the world (i.e. our website/marketing ourself.) > > The solution to getting binaries together can be tackled by making the > creation of packages more straight-forward so that we have a pool of > engineers that are capable of doing it - coming up with build/packages > system that makes the tasks easy to understand and quick to do . This > is very much solve the problem with software rather than manpower > approach, something that appeals to geeks quite well. Such solutions > aren't easy though so don't pop out overnight. > > On the marketing front, we will do very little pro-actively, it's > mainly word of mouth/email having a web presence. While the OSG > dominates the vis-sim and virtual-reality markets, and is strong in > scientific vis and GIS, we have only made small inroads into the games > market. The reason for the modest of penetration into the game market > will be marketing, part features, part culture. As an engineer I'm > inclined to stick what we are good at - developing software, and bit > by bit try and make progress improving our shop front. > > Robert. > _______________________________________________ > osg-users mailing list > osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org > http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list osg-users@lists.openscenegraph.org http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
