The Dink Network

Hi,

I don't picture myself putting a lot of time into GNU FreeDink again, so I figure it's time to pass the torch.
I'm notifying maintainers@gnu.org about this and they'll look for a maintainer.
I can suggest a name for consideration, if you'd like to take over maintenance let me know why you'd be a good candidate.

I'd just like to say many thanks for all your hard work over the years.

I thank you aswell!

Beuc you are a legend! Thank you for your important contributions!

Beuc, I too would like to add my heartfelt expressions of gratitude to those above. If it was not for freedink on Linux I "would not be here"(*).

(*)I don't mean that Beuc saved my life, at least not literally. I just mean that I would never have become an active member of the Dink Network here without /usr/games/freedink on Linux.

Thanks!

this is the true beginning of the end.

I must admit i am pretty stunned by this announcement , i doubt anyone else will have interest to take up what you are leaving , there are just about 10-12 people max interested to develop and maintain dink related stuff.

i doubt anyone else will have interest to take up what you are leaving

Both interest and knowledge...

there are virtually no options here. redink1 and shevek maybe?

dunno if there are any who'd be interested in maintaining it elsewhere but maybe we'll be seeing a new gnuboi here soon.

otherwise, we're DUCKED

Thanks for everything you've done so far, Beuc. You honestly don't get the shower of confetti and sexy ladies you deserve for everything you've done with Dink, but thanks all the same. May I ask why you're passing on the torch?

Skurn: I thought you hated FreeDink and are still using v1.07 or something.

no, i'm using 1.06

I appreciate all your heartfelt thanks, they mean a lot
Continuing or leaving a project is a delicate balance between the nice and not-so-nice parts of it, so I won't endlessly gloat over the former and bash the later.
Let's remind I officially started GNU FreeDink more than 15 years ago and a lot changed since.

Oh damn.
Thanks for everything Beuc, Freedink is the best and still has a lot of potential to become even better too, I hope someone picks it up.
Can't thank you enough for laying the foundations and keeping it going til now though.

@Beuc:

It may help the cause... if you would ... add some details of what it means to maintain freedink. If you give people an idea of what is involved, we might have more luck getting someone else to take over your role.

o How many operating systems do you have to maintain so you can compile on them?
o How much code have you changed (lines of code) over the time you have been responsible for freedink? Is that about 10% or 20% or 50% or even more?
o How often do you have to make changes to make certain that freedink is compatible with the latest releases of the operating systems you support?
o How many branches of freedink and dfarc are you currently maintaining?
o Is there anything else that you think might be helpful in giving people a grasp of the scope of this honor?
o What are the nice and not-so-nice parts you talked about above?

i would not be surprised to hear the beuc was working alone on this for a long time .

@SlipDink
I'm gonna give a few starting points but an important part of the maintainer's role is figuring out things by themselves:
- https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html#whatmeans
- clone the Git repo(s) from https://savannah.gnu.org/p/freedink
- run "gitk" to check the Git history/branches/etc.
- check the doc/ directory

@liquid141, yes and no:
https://www.gnu.org/software/freedink/credits

It was pretty much you , i hope you find someone with the passion to take over

Yes, thank you Beuc! FreeDink is definitely the most widely used and stable version of Dink available, and it is very impressive how you were able to tidy-up the existing code base.

I'm sad to see you go, but maybe you'll come back again

Just wanted to check up on this , free dink pretty important to us , i hope someone has taken over . Would seth or redink1 be interested ?

Looking at the webpage it still says beuc

What happens in the worst case no one can be found ?

What happens in the worst case no one can be found?

I think way back in 2009, there was a thread on this topic. Tal, and Redink1 actually wrote GNU FreeDink maintenance worst case scenario. The document was printed and given to Skurn for safekeeping, who at the time had an army of Pink Ponies. Since it was a top-secret, the content was classified and unreachable for the rest of the Dink community. Skurn of course, promptly sold the papers to the highest bidder, and the content of it lead to Arab spring in 2010. I don't recall exactly what the content was, except that there were two possible plans. Plan A had something to do with mass duck beheading, while Plan B involved Talporn

i made sure to write an "optional" plan c which, if whoever bought the documents decided they wanted to go through with a reformation, they had to agree to do with mine.

naturally, i won't share the details. you'll just have to wait and see.

OK joking aside, this is a serious matter. FreeDink is seriously important as it kept Dink Smallwood to be playable on modern PCs, but now it falls behind the HD version unless it gets some new features to have a reason to use (Besides being available on Linux and other systems)

Everything involves Talporn. Want to see an example?

@Tal

I'm amazed that no one responded to that yet. YES!!

This forum is better posted outside of the DN, or maybe on the GNU site or everywhere. Then we all be shouting Help! Help! GNU maintainer needed.

Bit late to the party, but thank you Beuc and others for the work done to keep Dink alive on modern platforms.

Hi, I'm also late to the party. I wanted to say thank you Beuc for maintaining this for so long! This game was one of the few PC titles I played constantly as a teenager. It was a period in my life where I kind of fell out of console games and only used the free and open source games that were in the Ubuntu repositories -- I was pretty lonely at the time and this game was one of only a few that kept me from feeling that too harshly.

It's also one of the first times I volunteered in the free software community. I'm the person who coded the current version of gnu.org/s/freedink back in 2012! (Under the name "Luiji".)

I'm sorry to see FreeDink go unmaintained, but I'm glad you're moving on at the same time. 15 years is a hell of a long time!