Crossing the 5 Person BitBucket Threshold

Re: Crossing the 5 Person BitBucket Threshold

Sat, 16 Apr 2016 00:54:02 +0000

I haven't heard any dissent on this. (Or anything for that matter.) If you really dislike option #5 (make the project public) then speak up now. I don't really want to have to go into panic mode when person #6 shows up tomorrow 45 minutes into the collab.

Re: Crossing the 5 Person BitBucket Threshold

Wed, 13 Apr 2016 14:15:20 +0000

I think I should also add that if this were a "normal" collab, I'd probably be saying we should go with #4, and split into two teams and work on two different (possibly competing) projects. 6 people is a lot for such a short time span. When we're making a new game from scratch, there's fewer ways to branch out and do your own thing. You're spending more time in a smaller codebase, and that causes problems.

In a normal scenario, I'd say that's reason enough to just split into two smaller teams. Honestly, I'm excited for the day that we have to do that.

This isn't a normal scenario though. We're starting from an existing codebase, and the core features are already implemented. It gives people many more options on where to go next, and I think this specific project can actually handle six or maybe even 8 or 10 people in this codebase. So my vote this time is to make the project public, in the event that we do cross that threshold. (We can keep it private until that becomes a reality.)

Crossing the 5 Person BitBucket Threshold

Wed, 13 Apr 2016 14:08:41 +0000

It seems like this time we're pushing the 5 person limit on BitBucket for private repos. Whether we actually cross that or not is somewhat dependent on who actually shows up, but it's a distinct possibility, and we felt like we should discuss contingency plans.

Here are some options for what to do in this case:

1. Transfer the repo over to me. Because I've invited people in the past, I can have up to 7 people on any of my repos, but that includes some people who are already on other repos that won't be joining this project necessarily. I could get us up to 6 people though.
2. Pay the $10/month cost one time and get up to 10 users.
3. Pay the $10 one time cost and self host the repo with what I'm assuming is basically the full BitBucket frontend. This avoids recurring costs, but it does require managing the server that has it, and making sure everybody has access to it, which probably isn't a trivial problem.
4. Split up into two teams.
- a. Split into two teams and both use the Xevious codebase as the starting point and then expand it from there. We could merge the two codebases at the end and be surprised by what the other team did. (It would be a horrible merge, I'm sure. It may not really be feasible to merge them, but it would be fun to try.)
- b. Split into two teams, have one work on Xevious and the other one find a different game. Swat's other collaborative game has come up as an option here.
5. Make the repo public, which eliminates the limit altogether, but for all intents and purposes, open sources the project. It would put a damper on any plans for taking this game, polishing it up, and selling it. Though whether that is practical or not is a different decision.

Option #5 has a bit of traction at this point, but I think we need to discuss this as a group a little more. It would be kind of nice if everybody who was joining us could weigh in here and say what your feelings are on going with #5 and making the repo public and the project open source if we end up with 6+ people in the collab.

If you're strongly opposed to #5, it would be good to also weigh in on which of the other options you'd prefer to see instead.