Hello Jonathan, hello all,
>
> His reason for not releasing the source was to stop being hassled when people
> made changes to the code. Being a TSR means that writing the code and debugging
> it it not easy. There was at least one amateur in that period (late 80s) who took
> code and modified it, his copy of the TheNet said something different and so did
> his BBS. So in order to reduce "support problems" he decided to keep the code to
> himself so that he wouldn't have to debug someone elses bugs.
>
There's one thing that should be added here. Obviously, there has
been no further development on BPQ since version 4.08a, which is
available for quite a couple of years now.
That indicates for several people including me, that the author does
not work on the program any more.
Therefore, it can't be such a bad idea to release the sources of this
masterpiece of software to the public. A hint mentioning that
there's no support for this code or program by the author may be
included. I think many people could deal with that.
> What is interesting having seen the open source become established, I don't think
> John had mush to worry about. Relatively few people play with the code, and those
> that do, tend to know what they are doing.
Agreed. There even may be a new maintainer that searches for
bugs and lokks after the documentation. An example for how it
could work is TFPCX from Ren� Stange, DG0FT. After he decided
to stop working on it and set his work under the GPL some kind
fellows (from the Netherlands I guess) continue development.
Cheers, 73
Gerd
