On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 10:25:09 -0800 Mark Crispin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
MC> Doing so is the type of behavior that Microsoft is often accused of doing: MC> taking the expedient approach instead of the correct one. I find it sadly MC> ironic that the open source community would even think of doing this, MC> after all the years of Microsoft-bashing over this very issue. Mark, I'm exchanging sporadic mails with you for the last 9 years or so and during all this time I don't cease to be amused by your habit of bringing Microsoft policy into just about any kind of technical discussion. Could we please just leave Microsoft alone? I have no relation with Microsoft but I don't like being accused of Microsoft bashing groundlessly and, while I'm proud to be part of, I don't represent this mythical (but, judging from your description, nefarious) "open source community" in any way at all, so could we please just leave it at that? Thanks. MC> It most certainly does violate the specification. How can you seriously state this in a case of a server which violates it in such way that it doesn't leave me any other choice but to do this? MC> The minute your software is installed at a site which has such reclama, it MC> also violates the intentions of the server administrator and adds to his MC> (or her) headaches. Your software has no way of knowing that this is the MC> case. But the user does. This is why I think that ideally there would be an option, e.g. a cclient callback to the main program which would allow it to decide -- presumably by asking the user -- whether to continue connecting. If there was a chance of this being ever integrated into c-client you can be sure that I'd provide a patch doing exactly this or whatever else you'd accept. However, when confronted to a total and absolute refuse to make any modifications at all to c-client from your part, I'm understandably reluctant to spend any amount of time on the code which will only create me additional maintenance headaches. MC> > I understand your point of view but you should realize, of course, that I MC> > am going to patch my c-client version (once again) because I can't tell the MC> > user with a straight face that I am not going to fix it when it's a whole MC> > of one line fix. MC> MC> In that case, honesty and morality requires that you also disclose to your MC> user that your client is BROKEN and NON-COMPLIANT with the specifications, I do disclose that the version of c-client I use has been modified. MC> If a site doesn't want to fix its server to comply with specifications and MC> run your client, then your client isn't important to that site -- and that MC> site shouldn't be important to you either. This is an amazing view of a problem which probably represented quite well the view of Internet in the early eighties. I may assure you however that when the server is run by a big ISP (as is the case here), no user, whatever his determination to use my client, can change their mind. And while I absolutely don't care about that site, I do care about my users which is the word which appears to never appear in your vocabulary at all. Regards, VZ -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ For information about this mailing list, and its archives, see: http://www.washington.edu/imap/c-client-list.html ------------------------------------------------------------------
