OSM: Test report of Taanilinn

I played Taanilinn in the easiest level, elfish fighter.

There was not this "presentation" at the beginning (meaning a big picture and a story), but the story was presented just before the actual playing. So the idea got clear. And the dialog after it was very informative! Good :)

The opponents were hard to defeat even in this level.. Well, I haven´t played Wesnoth awfully lot, but still this felt hard. In the first time I played I got only to the bridge before the enemy´s castle, I lost a fight there. On the second attempt I left Konrad to the base camp and recruited a lot of fighters. This time also the main enemy acted differently, it came to the bridge (and didn´t recruit that many enemies) so I managed to kill him and get the scenario done.

The second scenario made me laugh at the beginning, "an ugly duck forever" lightened the atmosphere and was good sense of humor on my opinion - everything doesn´t need to be that serious :)

But the but of the scenario was again the opponents/enemies. Hard to defeat! On daytime easier, but at night almost impossible. I again recruited a lot of fighters but was surprised to see that it wasn´t enough. There were too strong enemies, especially this one dude with the special sword. And the distance from our castle to the enemy´s castle was quite long, it almost got boring.

The maps were very good though, diverse. The characters also. And I bet that to a more experienced player playing this through isn´t that hard as it was for me :D
There was only two scenarios, but since they weren´t that short and simple, I believe it´s enough.

Job well done! Especially when considering that none of us were familiar with the Wesnoth beforehand.

:)

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth VIII

IT WORKS!!! :)

Our campaign really works! Well, it´s not an extremely huge piece of coding-art, but at least it´s playable. Feels funny to play it :) I was quite sure it would never reach this point.. If there was more time it would be nice to develop it further.

I´m not sure if it´s ever coming to the real Wesnoth (now I have the files only on my own laptop, in Wesnoth-folder), but if it is, it´s found under name The Quest of the Dwarves! *proud*

THANK YOU Lauri & Olja!! :)

And of course Kaido :) :)

Battle for Wesnoth
Download Wesnoth

OSM: Free Culture

What is Free Culture?
“A free culture is one where all members are free to participate in its transmission and evolution, without artificial limits on who can participate or in what way. The free culture movement seeks to develop this culture by promoting four things:

• creativity and innovation;
• communication and free expression;
• public access to knowledge;
• and citizens’ civil liberties.”

Source

'“Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig is a clear look at copyright law, how technology is affecting it both technically and in people’s perceptions, the current trend in legal responses to the technology, and how it affects the artists and authors in the world. Lessig is uniquely qualified to write such a book, because he is a professor of law, a computer geek, an author, and an activist in the field of copyright and creativity.”
Source

Free Culture Tour
Multimedia performance about copyright, creativity and the internet
"Free Culture is a multimedia show by artist, entrepreneur and INSEAD MBA student Colin Mutchler that mixes music, images, and spoken word, drawing from his personal experience and the creative commons to demonstrate the tensions and opportunities of sharing and remixing media."
Source

OSM: a FLOSS Success Story vs. Failure

Success of Moodle

"In academia land, one of the more popular forms of open-source is the system known as Moodle. London, UK-based The Open University is currently in the midst of implementing Moodle to the end result of “the largest use of Moodle in the world,” namely a complete student online environment. Moodle is currently employed in some aspects of Open’s distance-learning program and the “comprehensive online student learning environment” promises to be fully operational by February."

"Meanwhile, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Education has now in place a full-on “Moodle Service”, which acts as supplement to course material available to College of Education faculty and students and a resource to other university workgroups, workshop participants and communities."
Source

The Open Source Fiasko

"Hugger-Mugger Yoga Products is a $5 million supplier of yoga-related products such as clothes, yoga mats, and so on. After struggling with a variety of individual software products that did not integrate well, the company decided to implement open source ERP package Compiere. This package was chosen on basis of low-cost and because it includes modules that Hugger-Mugger specifically required."

Enterprise software implementations are complex — jobs can change, processes across an organization can be affected, and great care and feeding is required to be successful. This situation offers a classic study in how an IT initiative can move forward under its own steam, without sufficient reference back to what users actually need. In addition, it can be tempting to think that open source means cheap and easy, which is not necessarily the case. As someone wise once said, “Don’t let this happen to you!”"
Source

How to Make it Work?

1. Open source development is not business

Open source development succeeds or fails irrespective of the businesses that are directly associated with them. The constructive exploration of sustainability with respect to open source software development depends upon it.

2. Projects and open source development

An open source software development project can only ever be a singular instance of many possible developments of the code. It cannot be equated with the development of the code itself.

3. Projects or open source development?

The sustainability of an open source software development path is effectively beyond the capacity of analysis by case study or example.

4. Criterion of project success

Either the project retains the trust and good will of the open source community and thus remains the lead on the development path of the software or it does not. If no one is willing to invoke the option of the code-fork, then the project must be considered a success. An open source software development project which has no user or developer base will be successful by default. The worst that can be said about such a technically successful project is that it is uninteresting. By contrast a project with an extremely active development community will be at greater risk of failure using the above criterion. It will, correspondingly, also be of greater interest. Another potential limitation on this criterion of success is the very diversity of project types that may be found in open source software development.

5. All successful projects fail

A successful reference implementation project may advance the software development path even if some other project arises which carries the software beyond the reference implementation stage.

6. The success of failure

very successful open source software development project will eventually fail. Remember, it fails when some other project takes on the lead in the development path. Any project that holds the lead in an open source software development path is by definition successful.

7. Preparing for the success of failure

The test for any successful project is whether or not it stands at one point along an ongoing development path. If the project comes to an end and there is no continuance, no new project that will carry the code development further, then that software development path has truly ended. If it is the software development path itself that concerns us, then anything that assists that onward movement will be a benefit. For example, supplying sufficient comment within the code itself in order to make it easy to read by others increases the likelihood that someone else will take the code further. Structuring the code into comprehensible units is another way of honoring the code.

Source of the list

"The marker of success in an open source business is the same as that in any business: profit or loss. An open source software development project is not a business. Indeed, even when a single business lies behind the majority of the development work, I would argue that the software development project is still not itself a business. What counts as the marker of success for open source software development projects must therefore be something else."
Source

"The criterion of project success is whether or not it retains the trust and good will of the open source community and thus remains the lead on the development path of the software. Since no project is likely to sustain the lead on development forever, any successful open source software development project must encounter its own failure. The successful preparation for failure and transition of the software development lead marks an even greater success for an open source software development project."
Source

OSS Watch

Unlocking The Secrets of Open Source Success

The Secret of Successful Open Source Companies

The Myth of Open Source

The Success of Open Source

OSM: Legal Issues of FLOSS

I found a source which tells that SCO Group brought a lawsuit against IBM, the Group claimed that IBM employees had illegally transferred proprietary AT&T Unix code (which SCO Group owns) into IBM’s Linux projects.
Source

Another legal issue which I found was that some researchers in Cambridge had been forbidden to publish some material:
"Some laws, such as UCITA (a law in Maryland and Virginia), specifically enforce these clauses forbidding free speech, and in many other locations the law is unclear -- making researchers bear substantial legal risk that these clauses might be enforced. These legal risks have a chilling effect on researchers, and thus makes it much harder for customers to receive complete unbiased information.

This is not merely a theoretical problem; these license clauses have already prevented some public critique, e.g., Cambridge researchers reported that they were forbidden to publish some of their benchmarked results of VMWare ESX Server and Connectix/Microsoft Virtual PC. Oracle has had such clauses for years. Hopefully these unwarranted restraints of free speech will be removed in the future. But in spite of these legal tactics to prevent disclosure of unbiased data, there is still some publicly available data, as this paper shows."
Source
The .pdf

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth VII

In the last weeks we have made some progress :)

I made our main configuration file and scenario files. Olga made the maps to ASCII format. Lauri has made the transfers to Subversion and figures out the actual "how this will work" ;)

Our team has been talking about these things in here:
http://trac.htk.tlu.ee/osm/wiki/BlueTeam

And the materials of our campaign is in here:
https://www.htk.tlu.ee/repos2/osm/team2/The_Quest_of_the_Dwarves/

Feels so relieved.. Even though the task isn´t over, to make the campaign actually work seems to be a bit of a problem..

~Sonja

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth VI

Still having quite huge problems of understanding what we really are supposed to do.

In the last week or so I´ve created the main configuration file and three scenario-files. Scenarios are all in different maps and there is only one task in each. I think that´s the best we can come out with.. Hopefully even that.

The Quest of the Dwarfs
Orchs steal The Thing from the Dwarfs. The Dwarfs go after them. On the first map (Land of Dwarfs) the Dwarfs catch up some Orchs and there is a fight. On the next map (Forest Land) the Orchs attack. And on the last map (Land of Orchs) the Dwarfs and Orchs have a big battle. Dwarfs get their Thing back, if they win of course. The Thing is a special gem.

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth V

Me and my team have been doing things considering Wesnoth for three weeks now and still we are a bit confused.. The information is not in the "normal people´s language" and is hard to find.

I´ve been doing the storyline and putting tasks to the map

Somehow these just don´t open up!
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/EditingWesnoth
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/BuildingCampaigns

Well, we still have a bit time...

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth IV

We´ve been working with the campaign in TRAC of this course.

I´ve been thinking of the story etc. and now I´m getting to know the coding and so on needed to make the campaign..

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Create

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth III

I´ve just played three hours..

I played the same campaign (Etelän Vartiosto) and the same level (siviili). This time I didn´t have to figure out the terms ;) Campaign is OK, when you know it.

It´s funny how you just click the text field even though it´s not said to be done. Maybe somehow you think there must be more information if I click this or something.

This time I tried different tactics. I collected different amounts of warriors and different sets. I Managed to get over the river, but got defeated. Then I didn´t have any money. Well, then I started thinking of the villages (oh, a house is a village ;) and got some money from there. So then I started to go back and forth between the village and the fortress..

And then I noticed that the enemies aren´t safe when they are in the villages..

Well, then I found a new problem. I selected same warriors which I just had moved or something and couldn´t get the selection off so I made double moves...

I managed to be a bit more careful with the moves, refreshed my warriors in the village and send new ones all the time. I also found a warrior called Aleran. Game started to flow and I won Urza Math :) But I did it by night, there was no way to fight just by day time.

From the winning I got 255 pieces of gold :) I won in 15 sifts, there was 17 still left.

Next assignment was to win back the city of West. I played this around four times or even more. First I lost because I used the same strategy and left Deoran to the starting fortress to get more warriors. Deoran was supposed to get to the West.. Somehow I thought that you should first empty the city or something. OK, it was said that the city must be won back in 10 sifts.

Then I lost a couple of times, maybe because of not so wise moves. And some of the enemies were weird, it wasn´t so easy to hurt them.

I managed to fool around also with the loading ;) I loaded a replay or something when I wanted to try again :D

Then I discovered that by clicking the right tap of the mouse you can take back the selection of a warrior.. It helped a lot! I managed to get Deoran to the city but he was so week that the next assignment got short.. There was these new characters, also with the enemy. Have to continue some other day!

This gave something to think about but mostly I felt that it takes looong time to learn some strategies..

We´ve been planning our own campaign here: http://trac.htk.tlu.ee/osm/wiki/BlueTeam

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth II

Hmmm.. I seem to be not that good strategic..

Well at the beginning the word "kampanja" was confusing. I search for a word like "aloita" or something. When "kampanja" was the only word worth trying I tried it. Since the others were obviously something else. But I expected there to be instructions of something.

And when I realized that "kampanja" was a kind of style to play the game, to choose the situation, then the word "kampanja" was quite ok. Maybe on the first page should be a kind of text box telling that if you want to start an individual game choose your "kampanja" first.

From the campaigns I chose the "Etelän vartiosto" since it was a kind of introduction to Wesnoth. And I took the "siviili" -level since it was recommended to beginners. BTW the first longer text on the foreword was in English, the others in Finnish.

Are there any female characters? Not that I mind, but it would give some variety :)

The music is nice, it supports the story and creates the atmosphere, but isn´t too controlling.

At the beginning of the game I was confused. What should I do? Ok, there were this talk boxes which told where to go, but it isn´t so clear what you can do and how much on your turn. The idea of these kind of adventure/role games is excellent, that the enemy has it´s turn.

It´s good that there are these talk boxes and some automatic moves, cause otherwise playing would be more difficult. Quite many times I was in the situation of thinking "what now?". And just did something and ended my turn.

I didn´t get quite far from the river and "Jokilinnoitus". My gold was spend quite fast, I didn´t realize that I could keep my main character all the time in the fortress and make him have more people. It was not clear where to get more gold, but somehow it was collected in turns.

My first game was mostly WTF and defending. Next time I´ll try to be more aggressive. I thought I was it this time, but obviously not. I ended the game before loosing, it started to repeat the same pattern (get one man with the gold I managed to have - oh, another is dead - oh, the enemy is healing it´s men - yeppiii...)

Another strategy next time! Maybe today..

OSM: Battle for Wesnoth

Haa, finally I had time :)
I downloaded Battle for Wesnoth and got a glimpse of it. Seems interesting!
As a e.g. Giana Sisters -addict, adventure games are always something worth getting familiar with.
http://c64s.com/game/1397/giana_sisters/

(I had a Commodore 64 as a kid, and was VERY happy when the emulators came!)

OSM: FSF & OSI

Free Software Foundation
* Free software is a matter of liberty not price.
* Established in 1985
* The FSF promotes the development and use of free software, particularly the GNU operating system, used widely in its GNU/Linux variant.
http://www.fsf.org/
Free Software Foundation in Wikipedia

"Free software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things."
Source

Open Source Initiative
* California public benefit corporation, with 501(c)3 tax-exempt status, founded in 1998.
* Stewards of the Open Source Definition (OSD) and the community-recognized body for reviewing and approving licenses as OSD-conformant.
* Actively involved in Open Source community-building and education. OSI Board members frequently travel the world to attend Open Source conferences and events, meet with open source developers and users, and to discuss with executives from the public and private sectors about how Open Source technologies, licenses, and models of development can provide economic and strategic advantages.
http://www.opensource.org/
Open Source Initiative in Wikipedia

"Open source software is computer software whose source code is available under a license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. It is often developed in a public, collaborative manner."
Source

Differences?
FS is more free of these two. It´s totally free to use, study, modify and distribute. Only restriction is that the possible modifications has to be also free to the next recipients. OS is free to use, study, modify and distribute only under license or for example public domain. The other difference is that OS is developed in more collaborative manner.

Open Source Management

This blog came back in use now cause I started to study in Tallinn University. This is going to be a kind of diary for Open Source Management -course.