On Thursday, March 03, 2016 11:44:43 AM Lee Howard wrote: > How many is "many"? Did you take a survey? Or are you merely > expressing what you feel should be accurate because you believe your > opinions are shared by Alchaemist from Wikipedia (who put the > "Disadvantages" bits into the article in the first-place)?
It was discussed in the past on list by several, and some other put it on Wikipdia. How much do you need? People are not going to stick around year after year peeing in the wind. Most will voice an opinion, if not accepted move on, as they have. You do not see people who brought it up before still around. > > Though allot have moved on. > > How many of them moved on? Did you take another survey of them? How many are still part of the community posting to the mailing list at times? Even if not needing anything, could be helping others with questions. How many are committing code? http://assp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/assp/assp2/ > > Also do not confused developer/maintainer with > > author. People have taken over development of ASSP, but they are not the > > original Author, John Hannah. I suspect if they were still around things > > would have been broken up long ago. > > Did John ask you to speak for him on this matter? What makes you think > that John would have done what you want? By looking at some of this other stuff like wob. If there was more out there could get a better idea. But most are not so anti change as Fritz and not Thomas. https://sourceforge.net/u/jhanna777/profile/ http://iweb.dl.sourceforge.net/project/wob/wob/0.7/wob-0.7.tgz Also sadly ASSP as a project is not treated like others. You cannot go download each previous version that was released. Maybe ASSP was split up more in the past, which I doubt. Though rebuildspamdb was less coupled than it is now. Trying to look at the history in CVS is also difficult, lots of different root directories in CVS. At times I have had to keep my own copies of previous releases because they get removed from sourceforge. Most FOSS projects have every release available in source and/or binary format. > > I do not believe there are many currently contributing > > to ASSP development. > > If you're referring to code contributions, then it's actually possible > to count that number. Feel free to do that instead of referring to > nebulous terms like "many". No need to count, when you see commits only being made by one person. > However, software development contributions also come in the form of > user feedback such as you're doing now. It's valuable stuff. But, > again, it's possible to count that. True but I am talking about who is actually working with the code. Who is developing ASSP. > > What might the reason be for lack of interest in helping to develop or > > further ASSP? > > Let's presume that you are correct - although I necessarily agree with > you - but let's presume that you are correct... lack of interest in > helping to further develop the software may be because they don't see > anything wrong with it or requiring further development. I can code, > for example. Why don't I contribute code developments to ASSP? Because > I don't see anything that requires me to do that. That would also mean they have no ideas or thoughts of their own. Most developers can think of ways to further something, even if its deemed perfect today. Take qmail for example. Its been expanded allot beyond the original author. Spam being like viruses and the rest, its an ongoing battle. If it wasn't there would be no point to adding all the features ASSP has gotten over the years. I suspect more will be added as things change in the future. The spam battle is not over, ASSP is just great arsenal. > > Dictatorship vs community lead project. I believe ASSP is the communities > > not any one persons, no matter who wrote the code, currently maintains > > it, or is looking to further it. > > I think that you misunderstand open-source code development. I think you are underestimating my experience in the FOSS world. > While the > code may very-well be public domain or "free", that does not mean that > everyone has equal-access to that code used by everyone else. Oh yes they do.... If a project doesn't grant commit access, its called forking... Do not mislead yourself that the code belongs to anyone. Once its open sourced, the code is out there. Others can do what ever. Ideally they contribute back to the original source, but many projects get forked. OpenOffice, X, Gentoo, Debian over systemd, and many others. Most times forks are not good. > You're > free to alter and develop *your* copy of the software. You're free to > share that with others. Thomas has shared his copy. You don't have to > use it if you don't like it. All of the code is not Thomas's, he has furthered others work. As a long time users of ASSP I do not have to like the direction a projects been taken by new blood either. I rather the project not fork. I much rather keep communities together than fracture them. > > In the past this lead to 2 different releases of ASSP. > > Did it? This issue is what led to that fork? No it never led to a fork, but I think it might be why Fritz ceased working on ASSP. It wasn't a good thing. If you were around in those days you will recall such. > > Fritz release and the > > community. Many projects do fracture or fork. I would not want to see that > > happen to ASSP. > > I'm not sure what would be wrong with forking. In the git world it's > known as "branching". It's done constantly in open-source software > development and is not generally considered to be a bad thing except > when someone is trying to use it as a threat. Branches and forking in the git world have the intention of being merged back with upstream. Forking a project and splintering/fracturing the community NEVER is a good thing. There are very rare cases where a fork has become better than the original, and/or the original was just as good as it was before the loss of developers and community. Would you really want people with decades of experience with ASSP no longer around the community but part of another? What good does that do? > > I would also like to see others contributing to ASSP so the > > entire load is not falling on Thomas. > > Feel free. Develop what you like. Share it. I have tired, it looks like it may have to be ported to another language someday to get more active development and others interested in furthering assp. Perl is not a very popular language these days and is some what on the decline. Lots of stats out there to prove that fact. http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index http://githut.info/ > > If Thomas gets bored with ASSP and moves on, who will take over? > > Somebody will... or nobody will. It doesn't matter. You still will > have your copy, though, won't you? I will have mine. And we can > continue to add features and stuff if/when we need to. Isn't > open-source nice that way? It does matter to me. I rather see a active ASSP project with active development by several. If we all had to start maintaining our own open source software without upstreams being alive. It would really change things and everyone's efficiency would turn to crap. I wonder if ASSP did die, how long you would keep that code around, and what you would do with it. Would you add new features? Would you be able to fix issues that came up over time? Working with ASSP code is not really trivial. Having the code in your hands does not mean much if you are not capable of doing anything with it. -- William L. Thomson Jr. Obsidian-Studios, Inc. http://www.obsidian-studios.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. 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