Free Flight, Free Speech

Torsten Dreyer wrote:Hi Markus,

there is currently no defined status of 3.6 due to lack of (human) resources.

I suggest not mentioning the FGMEMBERS thing. It could seem like an excuse
and I've no doubt there are many more valid and important reasons for
skipping a release. The whole unfortunate affair doesn't need to be given
any more weight or attention. It would be far better to focus on the
positive,like all the terrific new work that will be part of the next
release, requiring just a little patience on the part of the community.

Curtis Olson wrote:What often goes unnoticed is the complexity of the release process for a multi-platform project of the size of FlightGear. It is such that adding more hands to a complex operation, doesn't always make it go more smoothly or more quickly. Throwing money at complexity problems often just piles stress and obligation on top of the complexity. Before Torsten took over as release manager, I was spending at least 40-80 hours (i.e. 2 full weeks) away from my day job to get a release done and out. With Jenkins automation and Torsten and Gijs' help, that has dropped substantially. But we are still struggling with complexity, or we get bit by last minute development/bug-fix dependencies. We are pushing towards more automation and looking at ways to simplify the process, but complexity is hard.

I've said this many times, but perhaps it bears repeating. FlightGear developers are volunteers. Some of us get dozens or 100's of emails a week related to FlightGear. I know some things sent to me fall through the cracks ... often because I simply don't know the answer, or don't have time or knowledge to address the problem or feature request. The expectations of the user base sometimes seem to be more aligned with commercial software projects with full time dedicated support, development, and management staff

People have suggested that we need to solicit funds or commercial support to pay for a dedicated staff, but if anyone has actually tried to go through the entrepreneurial process on a full scale, they understand the magnitude of what is being suggested, and it's not easy to simply throw money at a complex situation and see an improvement.

I'm still waiting for a benevolent commercial interest to bring a 1 or 2 million dollars to the table to transform FlightGear into a first rate commercial entity. But do we even want that, and who of our existing developers would jump over and do FlightGear for all out stress and full time obligation and all the other things that go along with full employment? I'm sure we could get 100's of applications of people who would think this is their dream job, but the cold harsh reality is that some manager level person is weeding through those resumes only looking for super star stand outs with lots of experience in the needed areas. Most of the people reading this thinking they'd love the job, probably wouldn't get called in for an interview ... the commercial world is a harsh place. Could we find these high quality/experienced people who are willing to work for $$$ and pay them enough to get them to jump over to a speculative venture? Would FlightGear ever be able to generate enough revenue to make a 1-2 million per year investment pay off for someone? Do any of us want (or are even qualified) to take on that kind of obligation and stress? FlightGear is highly successful when we can share it for free, but who can say how it would compete in a commercial world? The expectations of the xbox/iphone crowd are much different than the hard core, life long aviation enthusiast.

Anyway, the greatest challenge to regular releases is complexity.

Best regards,

Curt.