A slightly unfortunate attitude....

This quote sums up neatly many posts I've been reading over the last few months:

Quote:Off topic, however in my opinion, I could be wrong, because I am not the master of the truth, but delegate the bugs fixing and the development of a complex software as a game engine on the shoulders of his community, believe me or not, is an extremely risky decision, with unpredictable consequences, unfortunately.

I'm not picking on anyone in particular - this just seemed to capture the spirit of several statements that have popped up lately.

Lead, follow or get out of the way. The Steering Committee has been having trouble motivating anyone to fix almost anything, though almost everyone is ready to complain about something. There are noticeable exceptions - thank you very much to those who are actively working on fixes or improvements (whether for pride or profit). To everyone else - if you're not going to work on fixing something that bothers you then at least file an issue on GitHub and actively help whoever is working on that issue to track it down and test fixes.

Unlike the situation when GarageGames sold the engines commercially, you are all now in a position to contribute fixes. You are also no longer in a position to complain to anyone about issues - it's open source, it belongs to everyone, so fix it. If you make a cool improvement and you feel you need to charge for it go ahead, but be ready for the crazy flood of people whining about your new bugs - I guarantee there will be some.

One thing I cannot argue with from that quote is that the consequences of making these engines open source are indeed unpredictable. I, like others who were there at the time, believed that this community could pick up and move forward with the engines. I still believe it, but if you're not going to help then don't stand around and complain. Pitch in!

Everyone reading this has the ability to help in some way. Don't be afraid to lend a hand - the Steering Committee is working diligently to ensure that all of the pull requests are solid and that they fit into place snugly.

Thanks for your time. I hope no one is offended, but I also hope that more people will step forward to help find and track bugs and fixes rather than spend their time griping about them.