You can see that I’ve filled in the “About the Website” section already.
It would be helpful if someone would write the “About VASSAL” blurb,
something like “VASSAL was created by Rodney Kinney in 19xx blah blah…
history of VASSAL blah blah…” I’m guessing that Rodney is best qualified
to do this, but my primary interest here is that I not write it myself.
We also need text for the “About The VASSAL Team” section, if we want to
have one at all. What I’m thinking of as my model is the one for phpMyAdmin:
If we do this, then we need a blurb from each person who is “on the team”.
and possibly a photo of your mug. Something like:
"Joel began working on VASSAL shortly before the release of 2.9.9 in 2006(?).
Since then he has contributed code for the graphics pipeline and the Windows
installer, among other areas.
Joel lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and likes aardvarks, umlauts, and cheese."
There’s nothing to speak of there at the moment, except a widget from ohloh.com which estimates the amount of effort and cost which would go into
recreating the project from scratch. In our case, they estimate that it would
take 27 man-years and $1.5 million to write VASSAL from nothing. (Take this
with a grain of salt. I have no idea about the accuracy of this.) I was
thinking we could float this off to the side.
It puts me in mind of a late-night infomercial:
“Are you tired of those monster games sitting on your shelf unplayed? Do
you lack the space to set up Case Blue, Wacht am Rhein, and Terrible Swift
Sword all at the same time? VASSAL can do all these things, and more! Watch
as this man cuts the USS Missouri in half using only VASSAL and his bare
hands! Now how much would you be willing to pay for VASSAL? $1.5 million?
$1 million? Don’t answer that—because we’re giving away VASSAL for FREE!
Yes, free! For only zero easy instalments of zero dollars, VASSAL can be
yours. VASSAL is not available in stores!”
There’s nothing to speak of there at the moment, except a widget from ohloh.com which estimates the amount of effort and cost which would go into
recreating the project from scratch. In our case, they estimate that it would
take 27 man-years and $1.5 million to write VASSAL from nothing. (Take this
with a grain of salt. I have no idea about the accuracy of this.) I was
thinking we could float this off to the side.
It puts me in mind of a late-night infomercial:
“Are you tired of those monster games sitting on your shelf unplayed? Do
you lack the space to set up Case Blue, Wacht am Rhein, and Terrible Swift
Sword all at the same time? VASSAL can do all these things, and more! Watch
as this man cuts the USS Missouri in half using only VASSAL and his bare
hands! Now how much would you be willing to pay for VASSAL? $1.5 million?
$1 million? Don’t answer that—because we’re giving away VASSAL for FREE!
Yes, free! For only zero easy instalments of zero dollars, VASSAL can be
yours. VASSAL is not available in stores!”
On Mar 5, 2009, at 1:43 PM, Timothy Mccarron wrote:
And if you download in the next 10 minutes, we’ll throw in a Universal
Counter Maker absolutely free!
But wait, if you respond right now, we’ll double the order.
Two copies of Vassal. One to keep and one to give away to your friend.
And two Universal Counter Makers. But supplies are unlimited, so hurry!
If you want to see one which is really scary, check out the Linux kernel,
which ohloh estimates would require 2 person-millinea to write from scratch.
If you throw in GCC, then you have the equivalent of one guy coding for the
entirety of recorded history…
