On 16 Aug 2010, at 21:41, Stefan Bodewig <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 2010-08-16, Jochen Wiedmann wrote:
> 

...

> If RAT is going anywhere we must ensure it has enough people who care -
> of which there seem to be plenty, they may need to be recruited, though.

Well, as a mentor of RAT, a user outside the ASF and an early contributor I 
would most likely be involved in a small way - if there is a community to turn 
RAT into what it claims to be, a release audit tool. Although note I'm only a 
mentor and early contributor, not a committed. 

I think the general "RAT is great" vibe of the discussion was misrepresentative 
of what RAT currently is. There is not much to RAT at present other than a very 
complex pattern matcher that ensures license headers are present. 

It does not audit releases and to pretend it does is dangerous. 

So where is RAT going with respect to functionality. Is it really "complete" in 
it's current form, as some people have suggested?

Don't get me wrong, it's a great tool for a very limited use case (I do use it 
outside the ASF), but a top level project that stops at that functionality is 
not likely to draw more patches from me since there are other more complete 
tools that fill my wider audit needs (albeit not Apache licensed).

In a similar vein, If RAT really is done then why do we need contributors on 
board at all?

I think whether it is done or not should influence where it goes since the 
completeness or otherwise of the strategic goals of the project will affect 
whether people are on board or not. 

Ross


> 

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