Messages in this thread | | | From | "Khimenko Victor" <> | Date | Sun, 9 May 1999 17:42:50 +0400 (MSD) | Subject | Re: Maintainers |
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In <Pine.LNX.3.95.990509083703.357A-100000@localhost> Gerard Roudier (groudier@club-internet.fr) wrote:
I'll try to summarize discussion. Firstly for "general case" then for tunelp. I can be wrong here of course.
1. Forking of any software (GPL'd or not) is REALLY BAD THING. This is undisputable. (Take a look on Unix -- it's not GPL's code but idea is the same).
Now, why GPL allows it in first place ? Simple:
2. Forking of tree is not the worstest thing in the universe and if it's needed to solve more important problem this is exactly what's must be done.
Which problems are worse then forking (or probability of forking) ? One of them:
3. If software in not actively maintained and bugfixes or important improvements are not made public for long time then someone must step up and take maintainership. Aven if this will lead to risk of forking.
If working e-mail address of "official mantainer" (and/or primary author or software if in sources or documentation not written that you should not bother original authors anymore -- GIMP is example) is known then at least e-mail with explanation should be sent: mantainer can be just temporarily unable to actively mantain util/patch/whatever (I was in hospital for almost the whole April and I was clearly unable to mantain my alternative version of mod_ssl's EAPI)
Now back to tunelp. Was it actively maintained ? I'll say "CLEARLY NOT". Looks more like it was not maintained at all... Why ? Let's look on two versions: Andrea's one and RedHat 6.0's one. We can see changelog in Andreas's version: -- cut -- * Revision 1.6 1995/03/29 11:12:15 johnsonm * Added third argument to ioctl needed with new kernels * -- cut -- and we CANNOT see this change (and this note) in RedHat 6.0's version (spring 1999!). RedHat 6.0 includes version without this [minor] bugfix. I'll say: if FOUR YEARS was not enough to make version with [even minor] bugfix available on public ftp and if the same bugfix change from johnsonm@redhat.com is not even included in RedHat 6.0 then this is NOT ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^ called "maintainment". If this line was faked by Andrea (god, I hope not!) and if FOUR YEARS was not enough to make this bugfix then again this is NOT called "active maintainment".
Now back to Andrea's behaviour. It's inadmissible as well. At last mail with message: "since for last three years there are was no public versions of tunelp and since new kernel (2.1.131) has new ioctl to help some peoples and since tunelp must be changed to help them and I had no time to get your approval before releasing fixed version (kernel 2.2 is REALLY close now!) I decided to took over maintainership of tunelp; if you still maintaining tunelp then here is my version -- take look on it" MUST be sent (better more polite version of course, but no message at all is unappropriate behaviour). It's clearly better to have version with "trust the IRQ" option publically available before new stable kernel (2.2.0) is out not from official mantainer but it's clearly unappropriate to not try to resolve "forking problem" afterwards.
P.S. And about linux-parport: it's not clear to me how anyone can maintain such programm (the sole purpose of which is to tune /dev/lp? via Linux-specific ioctls!) without even being subscribed to list where changes to this ioctls are discussed... Peoples from there can send your required changes of course but better and more effective way in such case is just pass maintainership to them... IMHO anyway...
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