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[Raceray]

Interesting video about detaching users from community projects before they can corrupt anything.
It´s about bad tempered, uncooperative and disrespectful people who want to infect a "happy developer community"

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 1522818645

Nice to see that we are a healthy friendly community

[bvillersjr]

This is a good point! I have been thinking about this lately also. Part of my business process involves regular SWOT analysis. (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats) Since I have based my investments on X-Sim, I also give it a SWOT evaluation.

X-Sim does not have alot of developers and is not open source, so it isn't as vulnerable to the type of poisonous users that google is discussing, but it does have its very own unique vulnerabilities as a result of the unique public / private nature of the project.

I think that wherever people are doing great and innovative things, there will be a handful of people trying to either take it or in some way negatively impact it. Great things are happening at X-Sim and X-Sim has become a threat to a many people in this industry. You can be sure that some of these people will do their best to eliminate the threat or worse yet, become part of the team and destroy it from within.

A great community and software does not happen without alot of planning and preparation. It is good that we think about these things in order to help protect X-Sim and ensure that it continues to thrive.

[Frakk]

Thanks for sharing!

Good discussion, well worth the time watching it.

[johnr]

So how many developers are there? The feeling is there is only one. There being only one is a risk with source not being available. The impression there is only one hinders acceptance and possibly growth.

[MaxDamage]

So how many developers are there? The feeling is there is only one. There being only one is a risk with source not being available. The impression there is only one hinders acceptance and possibly growth.

The best simulation software i have tested are Condor soaring simulator, netKar and X-sim.
All those software are written by a small crew of people...
I think it's important that around those software could grow a community of volenterous and ent enthusiast people
to support the idea.

[bvillersjr]

There is one senior developer making the final call as to direction, but anyone can contribute the most critical aspects of the software:

Game Plugins - To add support for an additional game
Interface Plugins - To add output support for currently unsupported hardware
Math Plugins - To provide new mechanisms for manuipulating the game data before it is output to hardware.

This alleviates most of the issues brought up in the video with regard to multiple parties with differing agendas, paralysis by analysis, etc..

What would you like to do that you cannot do within the bounds of the plugin options above?

My only complaint is that we don't currently support enough development languages and no formal API exists for the remainder of the application.

[johnr]

First let me say that I think X-Sim is an amazing piece of software. It is impressive that it does what it does and does it so well. My comments are not meant to detract what what has been accomplished. I will continue to use X-Sim and will also continue to recommend its use to others. Also, I do not think any of the developers would act maliciously or intend to cause harm.

I was asking how many developers there were. When I asked it there was the assumption each of them had complete access to the source code that was needed to build all aspects of X-Sim.

Reading into your response: Anyone can contribute to certain areas but there is only one person that has access to all the source code needed to build a working version of the software.

I can see many kinds of software where this model would be acceptable. However, X-Sim is different in that on its own many of its capabilities are "useless". It is expected others will invest time/resources to interface their work to X-Sim. Furthermore, they will be highly dependent on it. Therefore, they will be highly dependent on a single person and their actions (or lack of action).

This is a weakness/risk to X-Sim. I can think of a variety of reasons where a sole developer is unable or unwilling to move project forward.

Maybe this model is what hinders X-Sim's growth and why some in the community are hestitant to adopt is use.

It is not clear to me why things need to be set up this way. There are ways to retain control without an approach that exposes the community to such risk.

Again, X-Sim is a great application that I will continue to use and recommend to others.

[bvillersjr]

AKAIK, one reason for the source code not being public is that it contains some critical code that is not able to be made open source as well as some third party commercial components.

The third party commercial components could be overcome by additional developers having a paid license for the components. However, the propriatery critical components could not be overcome without rewritting them.

In short, not all aspects of the application are able to be made open source.

SirNoName can offer a better explantion, but this is my understanding.

I have often considered creating an "OpenSim" open source simulator software but given the number of contributors I see in this community vs. the number of users, it would seem obvious that whoever started such a project would be doing 80% or more of the coding on their own anyway. I'm not sure tht the 20% or less justifies not having complete ownership of the code, which is why I suspect that there is no OpenSim project in existence.