[crossfire] crossfire source code control systems

[Mark Wedel]

  My personal thought is to open the vote to everyone, but also require that 
each person include a line on what type of user/developer they are, something 
along the lines of frequent committer, infrequent committer, read only access 
(play the game, use the SCS to keep up to date), and not currently a developer.

  While we want to be inclusive, I do think they may be some differences in 
voting - in particular, taking all the votes is good, but if the results from 
the frequent committers is much different than the rest, that needs to be taken 
into consideration.

  As someone said, this is because the more active developers are more likely to 
be aware of the different systems, and the shortcomings, etc.

  I know that if I wasn't a developer, I'd vote for CVS.  Why?  Because it is 
working fine for me, and I wouldn't see any real advantages of any other system 
(having local pristine data like SVN doesn't buy me anything if I never modify 
my source).

  I'll admit that for myself, I wasn't that aware of what the different systems 
offered until this discussion came up, and at which time I read the manual for 
some of these different systems.  Before that, I really wouldn't have had enough 
info to make a useful decision.  Not to say that all infrequent developers are 
in that situation (some may be familiar with other systems just based on being 
part of other projects etc).  But it is really the developers that are going to 
see the many issues related to the system.

  I also think that a private ballot (e-mail) method may be best.  Simply as 
some way to sort of people trying to adjust the votes based on results they 
currently see.  May not be an issue, but it will also avoid a bunch of e-mails 
to the mailing list.

  I think a 2 week voting period is more than long enough.  Yes, a few people 
may be on vacation and unable to vote, but I'd say that is probably going to be 
a relatively insignificant amount of total voters.  It seems doubtful that it 
will swing the election one way or another.  In addition, this has been bouncing 
around for quite a while already, and until a decision on this is made, it 
doesn't make sense to make the major/stable branches, which also means work in 
the major new features have to happen in local copies, etc.

  If the election is very close, I may use my executive powers to make the 
decision anyways (system A is easier to set up, or of the more mainstream 
developers, this system was the winner, etc).

  I'll probably sending out the voting form in the near future.