# The following was supposedly scribed by
# Ovid
# on Tuesday 15 March 2005 02:15 pm:
>Does anyone know anything about Parse::Lex? �It appears to have been
>abandoned, but I need it. �It currently fails all of the tests and I
>know what needs to be done to fix them, but I'm loathe to proceed
>without some info on this.
After 3 weeks of contacting various authors about various plans for
various modules and getting various responses (or not), I'm inclined to
say that you should
just get to work
and assume that you can get the namespace reassigned if the author is
indeed MIA.
>Does anyone know anything about it? �I've just emailed the author, but
>I understand that he's not too responsive (particularly given that a
>broken build has been sitting on the CPAN for almost 6 years.)
What did David Coppit do about "Can't contact author. Abandoned module?"
I don't see a follow-up from that discussion (but I guess CPAN shows
that he is now the maintainer of Benchmark::Timer.)
Anyone know of a "Guide to Modifying Perl Modules"? Of course it would
be taboo to propose a formal process, but I'm betting that abandoned
modules, and unresponsive or disagreeable authors have a lot to do with
namespace pollution. Of course unresponsive and disagreeable are not
the same thing, and it would be irresponsible of me to not mention the
"didn't do your homework" factor of new modules. However, it seems
that doing your homework doesn't pay off lately. And of course not
doing your homework just makes the problem worse for everyone else.
Assuming that I don't have to file this message in my Warnock's dilemma
folder, is it possible to answer the question(s) in the general case?
How do you get enhancements to an existing module released if the
maintainer cannot be contacted? (or refuses to reply or is just being
unreasonable, etc.)
Would anti-pollution laws help or hurt CPAN?
How do you get more authors to do their homework before reinventing the
wheel?
How do you determine if an old module is perfect, unused, or
unmaintained?
If it's in-use but unmaintained, how do you find the other users that
are (apparently) dealing with the same issues as you?
And most importantly to Ovid, what is the best way to "just get to work"
if you haven't been able to contact an existing author?
Some of these are questions apply to open-source in general and some are
more specific to CPAN (due to the blessing/curse namespace issues.)
Maybe a module-hackers-announce list? Post to that and CC the original
author and then start hacking until someone says stop? That sure beats
waiting an indefinite amount of time for approval, but then my approach
to traffic engineering involves big green "go" signs.
--Eric
--
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
-- Occam's Razor
---------------------------------------------
http://scratchcomputing.com
---------------------------------------------
