[Forge-main] FRINGE Information

[Ricardo Gladwell]

Hi All,

This is just a quick update to let you know how the fringe project is
going. The recent change name has had a few repercussions. First of all,
the official fringe web-site is as follows:

http://www.freeroleplay.org/fringe/

At the moment it is fairly barebones but it will improve over time. What
is important now is the use of the project opage on Savannah:

http://savannah.gnu.org/
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/fringe/

Savannah is a web application that is extremely helpful for managing the
development of projects, such as FRINGE. What does it offer? Well, I
will list a few of its features and how they will help us:

CVS
---

CVS (or Concurrent Versioning System) sounds complicated but is in fact
quite simple. A CVS repository, such as the one we have at Savannah, is
a database that can be used to store files. In our case we can use it to
keep a store of each of the documents we are working on (FRINGE Basic,
FRINGE Fantasy, etc). What makes CVS special is that it not only keeps a
copy of each file but it keeps a copy of every version of each file in
order of daye! That means that if we accidently make a bad change to a
file we can simply go back to the previous version.

I will be using CVS to store our files. It means we have a publically
accesible place where all the files are stored and if anything happens
to my hard-drive we don't lose any of the data. For more information on
CVS ask me or please see:

http://savannah.gnu.org/faq/?group_id=11&question=How_do_I_start_using_the_CVS_repository.txt

Mailing Lists
-------------

Through Savannah we can create a near unlimited number of mailing lists.
At the moment we have one, FORGE-MAIN which we use for everything. At a
future point in time it may become useful to have more than one (one for
main discussion, one for the developers and so forth).

Bug Tracker
-----------

Normally the bug tracker utility allows users to report bugs they
encounter in computer programs so that the developers can go through and
remove them. In our case, the bug tracker can be modified to allow us to
track bugs in the roleplaying system - for instance, inconsistant rules,
spelling or grammer errors and so forth.

At some point somone will have to become in charge of the bug tracker,
going through it and eliminating irrelevant bugs and reporting valid
bugs to the mailing lists.

Project/Task Manager
--------------------

This is another potentially useful utility that allows you to set up
projects for your work and allocate them to individual developers. This
means we can schedule tasks and give them deadlines, etc.

So, I recommend that people who are further interested log onto
Savannah, create an account for themselves and start investigating how
it all works.

What is this all leading up to? Well, at the moment I hope to create
some 'official' positions for the leadership development team. What form
of 'leadership' or what the precise roles will be I have not decided. At
first I would be taking on the role of Director, although I intend some
form of elections or powersharing to be created for fairness, although
such complications are for a future point in time when numbers makes it
feasible.

Possible roles would include:

* Publicity Officer
* Graphics Designer
* Playtest Cooridinator
* Bug Tracker Maintainer
* Proof Reader

Let me know what you all think, yours...

-- 
Ricardo Gladwell
President, Free Roleplaying Community
http://www.freeroleplay.org/
address@hidden