The thread you've all been waiting for? Maybe. So, it's been about a year since the last release of TMDA on either branch, and probably even longer since any new work has been done on it. I needed that break to flesh out some other aspects of my life, and I'm sorry the project had to suffer for it. It seems every other developer followed suit after I "left".
In the interim patches in the form of both bugfixes and enhancements have popped up here and there but they have never been integrated into the repository. I must say that despite this, TMDA is relatively bug free and very stable, though there are a few outstanding annoying bugs such as the "string payload expected: <type 'list'>" error that should be fixed. So, where do we go from here, and who will lead the way? It won't be me, unfortunately. I think my life at this point can best be described by the words of Jim Morrison: "The future is uncertain and the end is always near." I haven't written a line of code in any language in about a year. I hesitate to use the words "falling apart", but certainly every aspect of my life currently is in flux in a major way. I don't have the time or the heart to commit to one more thing right now. I feel out of touch with everything right now, computers, programming, and the opensource world included. So I think what we need is for someone(s) to step up to the plate and become responsible for integrating changes and/or developing the software further if need be. These duties can be shared, of course. We have two branches, a "stable" and an "unstable" as described at http://tmda.net/download.html#branches - the stable should only have well tested bugfix-only changes made to it, while the unstable has free reign at this point. Does anyone feel like volunteering to maintain or co-maintain one or more of these branches? It can't just be anyone with interest, of course, as a certain amount knowledge about how TMDA works as well as about the guts of the code will be required. Particularly on the "stable" side, someone would need enough knowledge to be able to test changes to insure they are correct and also will (hopefully) not cause new bugs. I don't imagine this would be terribly time consuming for the right person. Obviously, one of the prior developers like Tim Legant, Jim Ramsay, or Gre7g would be best suited to do this, but honestly I have no idea where they are either. I've tried to contact Tim a couple of times in the past year, but have received no response. From casual observation of the lists, Stephen Warren seems like he would also be well qualified for these duties (though I'm not putting you on the spot Stephen). So, what do you think? Any takers? If so, I can begin to open up the various resources again (CVS, Wiki, FAQ, etc). At this point, the tmda.net server where much of this is hosted is not in jeopardy of going away. If that should change I will be around to migrate as needed. Thanks. _________________________________________________ tmda-workers mailing list ([email protected]) http://tmda.net/lists/listinfo/tmda-workers
