Re: flexfax: Hylafax future

[root@raider.raider.net (Mark J. Bailey [HOME])]

> 
> > 3)A port to NT - Recently cygnus have released some librarys to make NT
> 
> The Cygnus libraries are going commercial, so you won't get a free port
> this way.
> 
> > machine look like a unix machine, i imagine this would greatly speed up a
> > port of the code
> 
> Going to NT would significantly increase the support load.  One of the main
> reasons for going to NT seems to be that people have been convinced that
> they can get the power of Unix without the need to understand it (everything
> is GUI) - actually the problem with NT is that you can't do everything with
> the GUI and it is very difficult to find out how to go round it, and normally
> requires much more complex programming than simple shell scripts.
> 
> Hylafax, in particular, represents all that the NT lovers hate in Unix:
> lots of component programs with text files to configure them.  To really
> reach the NT market (rather than people forced into NT, from Unix, by
> management policy) you would have to create a complete GUI management and
> configuration suite; in a lot of cases, that is all that Microsoft do -
> e.g. Microsoft DNS appears to be a thin veneer of GUI, giving you
> restricted access to the zone files in the standard BIND code.
> 
> You are not going to get away with issuing source patches (already a problem
> with many Linux users++, but they do have the option and are more likely to
> be motivated), and even lists of registry key changes will probably not be
> taken well.
> 
> ++ I'm a Linux user, but without a plug and play background.
> 

I agree with what you say albiet I also feel a bit disenchanted that 
"computing for the rest of us" means a lower common denominator overall
and it also seems to lock in that lower common denominator such that 
emerging innovations are going to run into greater and greater deaf ears.  :-(
A classic case in point is where would Internet today be had it been 
left solely up to Bill Gates????  Well, probably where alot of us would
rather it had stayed!  :-)  With the appearance of Linux on the scene, I
feel that the computing hobbiest community finally has access to unix the
way it did for DOS and is embracing the opportunity to homebrew the beginnings
of what leads to a more GUI oriented management missing from unix (to any
real degree) to date.  This speculation is easily observed if you look at
the explosion of contributed software (character and X11/GUI) for unix/linux
on the past four years.  Used to be that contributed X11 software could be
counted in a few dozen (and what was on the contrib subdir of the X11 
distrutions) and now, well, the contrib directory at RedHat is considerable!
I firmly believe (IMHO!) that freely avaliable systems like Linux and FreeBSD
will end up being what saves unix and not good marketing!  SCO is 
experiencing (last financial report I looked at) record earnings.  Although
impossible to measure effectively, how much of that was influenced by someone
at a company getting Linux at home or at the office and playing with it and
learning that unix has tremendous computing power for what hardware it 
requires (computing power not one-to-one with horse power) and then further
influencing the decision process in favor of unix over NT - I know that in
a couple of cases with some large clients of ours, this in fact did happen!
But these are my thoughts and I am *NOT* interested in carrying debate on
this here in this forum.  :-)  There are PLENTY of other places for this.

Now, continuing my original thread, where is HYLAFAX going to go?  A couple
of people in the list that I would like to have heard from are Sam Leffler
(the creator of HylaFax) and Paul Vixie.  I single out Paul as he has 
graciously played host to the Hylafax web site for some time and (IMHO)
seems to usually have a good finger on the pulse of something he is involved
with.  Either of these two reading and would care to venture commentary?

And, parallel to this, what (if any) plans does SGI maybe have for Hylafax???
Ie, could there be some movement behind the scenes to take it commercial
as has happened in some other arenas (like NCSA web server of unix LISTPROC)???
I (for one) would certainly not like to see this happen as with the case of
LISTPROC, the moment CREN bought rights to it, the "free" version was 
frozen and heavy restructions placed on any further "free" development, etc., 
and essentially it is a dying/fading GEM!  So much so that the author has
announced he is leaving CREN to form a venture to bring back another similar
system as an alternative.  What can SGI do with Hylafax anyways?  Best I
can see they could do whatever they wanted (although working as I do I
certainly have not taken time to research such to any nth degree).

The reason for my interest in this is that over the years, Hylafax has come
to standout (IMHO) as one of the top 10 useful packages that I have run
across and I want to know more about where it is going (if only to satisfy
my own hope in a bright future for freely available quality systems - dream
or no).

FWIW,

Mark