Looking forward to FOSDEM 2012

Submitted by giacomo on Fri, 01/27/2012 - 08:12

FOSDEM (Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting) is probably the biggest non-commercial event where FOSS enthusiasts, developers and users meet every year. This year it takes place on the 4th-5th February, in Brussels (as usual).

It is since long that I'm trying to go there, but for one reason or another I never managed to. This year I have one reason more to go there and, indeed, my flights and rooms for FOSDEM are finally booked!

The reason is that many FOSS game developers set up a devroom for the 5th, where they will talk about issues related to FOSS game development. I definitely want to be there and to listen to the BfW related talk, in particular!! :)

First dive into the project - Quote from the field

Submitted by giacomo on Tue, 01/17/2012 - 09:12

"...this also was my first contact with an open source community :)
What I found was almost no hierarchy, people saying "well, just go for it and we'll see afterwards if it's worth it", or "sounds good, have a go on it". One of my first activities on IRC was a talk with Dave where I learned, that:

  • He was probably the only person who had an overall view of the codebase
  • Most other coders never even had looked into the code I was about to touch.
  • ..." (Wesnoth developer, Interview 10/01/2012)

Coming back soon - Some updates

Submitted by giacomo on Fri, 10/28/2011 - 07:54

The last entry in this blog is three months old now, but not the blog nor the research are dead. I'll come back soon to write about the final phase of data collection and the analysis of data.

This long blogging break was due to several factors. First of all I needed some days of vacation, therefore I took-off a couple of weeks in mid-august. In September, I had to tune up with other senior colleagues at University to follow their planning of some courses/seminars for the next academic year. Moreover, I had to work hard on the writing of the theoretical chapter of my dissertation, which took me more than one month. Therefore in these months I had no time to keep working on data collection in a consistent way, let alone blogging about it.

Anyway, although I still have to finish setting up part of a seminar and one introductory course for this academic year, starting from the end of the next week I'll be back dedicating more time to the research itself, therefore more blog entries will soon appear. Stay tuned! :)

How suggested features die 'miserable deaths'

Submitted by giacomo on Tue, 07/26/2011 - 15:22

One of my recurrent question in my interviews with Wesnoth developers, contributors and users relates to negotiations between users (and their wishes for game improvement) and developers (and their efforts to improve the game).

Being a quite mature project, Wesnoth already developed its own governance mechanisms to deal with users' feature requests. I consider the Why doesn't Wesnoth have my favorite feature FAQ as an artefact of this maturity, however the way in which this disclaimer plays out in practice, in the daily life of the project, is of interest for my research and it does not show in the FAQ.

As of now, the account quoted below is one of the best description, I received during my interviews, of how ideas get suggested, discussed, implemented/rejected in the Wesnoth project.

Data collection - Overview on interviewing

Submitted by giacomo on Fri, 07/15/2011 - 13:48

At the end of March, I wrote this entry about recruitment for interviews. If I recall correctly, at that time I had a total of about 13 interviews (few completed, some undergoing, many yet to start). Four months later, recruitment and interviewing are still one of my major activity, and this is the current situation:

  • 21 interviews successfully completed:
  • 10 interviews currently undergoing:
  • 7 interviews on hold/waiting for confirmation:
  • 2 refusal only, so far.

Surprisingly, the most chosen interviewing medium is the forum private messages system. 9 interviews happened over e-mails, 4 through IRC and one face-to-face. All the remaining interviews run through the forum PM. I did not expected it, but it is a nice surprise.

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