[AppDB] Resend: Change 'vendor' to 'developer'

[Alexander Nicolaysen Sørnes]

Søndag 30 juli 2006 18:49, skrev du :
> On Sunday 30 July 2006 7:45 am, Alexander Nicolaysen Sørnes wrote:
> > The patch is the same; I would just like to point out that this change
> > has been discusses, and there were no objections to it.
> >
> > Change 'vendor' to 'developer'.  Variable names are not changed, so this
> > patch should not cause any trouble.
> >
> > Lørdag 29 juli 2006 15:49, skrev killertux killertux:
> > > -I and Tony Lambergs decided half year ago that "Vendor" ==
> > > "Developper"
> > >
> > > -adding Distributor and Publisher will make things harder and it's
> > > useless since appdb is for testing info therefore we are interested
> > > about developper.
> > >
> > > -anyway Vendor can be also [Freeware], [Open Source Software],
> > > [Shareware]
> > > but I am not so happy reading licence agreements.
> > >
> > > -I think we should rename "Vendor" to "Developper"
>
> I'd prefer we switched 'Vendor' to "Company".  Company is simplier and in
> more common usage and its likely that people will look at the box, see a
> company name and be able to match it to this field.  They won't have any
> idea about publisher, vendor, distributor or developer, they'll just pick
> the biggest name other than the name of the program and likely go with
> that.
>
> Also, if everyone wants to make this change and is serious about it then we
> should also rename the database columns and fix up the sql as well to keep
> these names in sync, otherwise people maintaining the appdb code will
> somehow have to know that each instance of 'vendor' is really something
> else like 'x'.
>
> Chris

The term 'company' is ambiguous, as it would depend on which company a user 
associates with a game.  For games like Battlefield, many would 
associate 'company' with the distributor, as EA has its large logo slammed on 
every game, but with for example Doom 3, 'company' would be the developer, as 
the id Software logo is dominating.
Most people, however, know the difference, at least those who submit 
applications to the database.
Besides, the publisher and distributor could change (i.e. companies merge and 
buy each other); the developer, however, will always be the same.  The 
AppDB's purpose is to help people get applications running with WIne.
If you write to Ubi Soft asking about the networking code in Warlods Battlecry 
II, for example, you would probably get an autoresponder or no reply at all, 
but if you write to the developer, chances are you will get the information 
you need.


Regards,

Alexander N. Sørnes