[gcompris-devel] [GCompris] Project Study

[Bruno Coudoin]

Le mardi 18 mai 2010 à 00:12 +1000, Dwaipayan Deb a écrit :
> Hi Bruno,
> 
> I am a Masters Student at Australian National University in Canberra,
> Australia. The university has started a course on Free and Open Source
> Software Development (a first of its kind in the world). You may
> visit http://cs.anu.edu.au/students/comp8440/ for more information on
> this course.

Sound a good idea. I also heard of this kind of course in france.

> During this course, I stumbled upon your brilliant project GCompris
> and decided to study and contribute to this project and write up on
> it. My previous email with the draft version of the project study as
> attachment is currently waiting moderator's approval. I don't mind if
> anyone wants to enhance that document further and use it for any
> aspect of the GCompris project. I shall be able to provide a better
> version by this weekend.

It seems like it passed through.

> I was able to learn a lot about the project from its official website
> (http://www.gcompris.net), archive of the mailing lists
> (http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=gcompris-devel), the official wiki and the bugzilla. However, I would highly appreciate if these questions could be answered.
> 
> 1. As per Wikipedia, GCompris was started in 2000. However, I could
> not find any documented history of the early days of the project. So
> when did GCompris start? Or is there any other source of information
> of the early days of the project?

All in my head only and the few who were believing in GNU/Linux on the
desktop at that time. The first release was about July 2000.

If you want to see how we progressed, you can look I my original
drawings in the early versions:
http://www.fsfe.org/projects/education/tgs/img/gcompris-menu.en.png

By the way, thanks to all the graphic artists who joined us over the
years. 

> 2. The project moved to GIT from CVS. Was CVS used from the start?

I started coding without version control system and then moved to CVS
from sourceforge if I remember. Then we moved to Gnome because it was
better to be part of a well organised projet. We benefit from it
especially for the translations.

> 3. How's the commit access granted to a contributor?

I do my best to give it to people you contribute regularly over a
reasonably long period of time. But this also require the Gnome team
approval.

> 4. The project is licensed under GPL v3. But does the project follow
> any copyright policy or follows the copyright policy of Gnome
> projects?

I don't request copyright assignment is this is what you are talking
about.

> 5. GCompris is licensed under GPL v3. However, the windows and Mac OSX
> full versions need to be bought for 20 Euros. Under what licenses are
> those sold/distributed?

There is not licence change. This is just a trick to give remind our
users that they can really help the projet financially.

> 6. Is there any structure to manage releases?

The release process is to run 'make dist' on GNU/Linux then build the
Windows and MacOSX binary. For the laters there is a readme file for
each platform that I use as a reminder.

> I will greatly appreciate if you could answer these questions. It
> would help me in understanding the project better and document the
> project study better.

A little notice for your document. GCompris is also used for adults who
never touched a computer. Having a kid game in front of us make them
less afraid of doing something wrong.

> Also, I am in the process of doing some translation work for the UI.
> Also, please let me know how can I contribute in translation of the
> website and wiki.
> 
You are welcome. I'll create you the accounts but which language are you
going to work on.


-- 
Bruno Coudoin
http://gcompris.net  Free educational software for kids
http://toulibre.org  Logiciel Libre à Toulouse
http://april.org     Promouvoir et défendre le Logiciel Libre