Re: flexfax: Whose looking after Hylafax?

["Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us>]

On Fri, Mar 19, 1999 at 07:51:31PM +0000, darren@hylafax.org wrote:
> There are presently three volunteers making HylaFAX.ORG possible. It runs on 
> (mostly) my hardware and internet feed, so I tend to coordinate more than 
> anything else . . . as such I'd like to state now that we welcome volunteers 
> to the project who feel they might like to create a role for themselves ;-) My 
> goal, if it can be accomplished, it to move to an open development model as 
> painlessly as possible.

i'll stick my nose into documentation, at least, from an editory stand.

> You must appreciate that we sincerely want to do what will be for the overall 
> and lasting good of the HylaFAX community. As such, we are treading very 
> carefully where it comes to the maintenance of the HylaFAX codebase. Matthias 
> Apitz was selected by Sam Leffler to maintain the code, and we owe Matthias a 
> great deal of thanks for the distribution you are all using. Ideally we would 
> like Matthias to endorse and join, perhaps even lead the code-related side of 
> our efforts. But, and I believe (but I am not certain) that I speak for the 
> other HylaFAX.ORG volunteers, I feel that we need to move from an exclusive 
> closed development model to a MUCH! more open one.

Indeed.  But don't forget the second precept of open source
developement, as I noted in a letter to the editor at Linux Weekly News
this week: there needs to be as few hands on the tiller as possible,
preferably one.  Architecture by committee is not the best plan.

Luckily, we already fulfill the _first_ precept: get a usable,
functional release out there.

> I'm afraid that your post, Damian, has pre-empted the discussions we wanted to
> have with Matthias about "the future". Further exacerbating the situation, 
> Matthias is traveling and unable to share with us his thoughts on the matter. 
> I think we need to hear from him before anything "official" should/can happen.

I'd say that was a good plan.  I want to take a moment to publicly laud
both Sam and Mathias for that which we have now.  It's easy to forget,
in the rush to make things better, that things are pretty good now.

> >David Woolley must spend half his waking life answering questions on
> >the mailing list - he does a sterling effort, but wastes much time
> >with the same questions again and again. No new release to permanently
> >squash the problems.
> 
> We're hoping the archives will alleviate much of this. Kudos to Phil W. for 
> some sterling work to bring these to you. Alas, we did not wish to push the 
> patches too heavily on the www site because of their "unofficial" nature, and 
> also because we have been hoping to obsolete them all with a new release, 
> preferably from Matthias, to whom we had intended to submit our work on a new 
> patchlevel (Robert is heavily involved in this area).

I think that a re-work of the FAQ would be good too.  I'll try and find
time to snarf the archives, and see how big a job that is.

> >Look guys is this stuff Open Source/Free Software or what? What
> >happened to the release early and release often model (aka Bazaar
> >model)?
> 
> Not traditionally the way HylaFAX has been done, alas.

More to the point, _no_, HylaFax has _not_ been open source, to date,
as that term has come to be commonly understood.  It comes from an
older tradition, that of comp.sources.unix, approximately.

> >My understanding is that Sam Leffler, who originally wrote most of the
> >code, no longer had the time or the inclination to continue. It seems
> >he nominated Mathias, be he doesn't have the time to do it either - or
> >at that is how it appears. This is fine, however he must designate a
> >new maintainer. 
> 
> Sam no longer works at SGI, and does not intend to participate in HylaFAX 
> development in the future. I do not know how Matthias feels about this whole 
> thing, he's been a hard man to elicit a response from.

Well, we'll see when he returns to roost.

> >I see a lot of good, talented & motivated people running around this
> >list. I think it is time we moved forward. If not, I think it is time
> >we did the unthinkable and forked the code.
> 
> We've been working very hard to prevent a code fork. I understand your 
> frustration, honestly, but let's be careful to respect the work of people like
> Matthias, and attempt an inclusive approach, wherever possible. It's a dilemma
> we're attempting to work through. A bit more time will help.

I think, given that the fixes _do_ exist, that we can all certainly
wait a bit to see them make it into the "factory" distribution.

> It's a superb product. I'm committed to it with TPC.INT, the other
> hat I sometimes wear. And I'm highly motivated to see that it continues
> to grow.

<wry chuckle>

>          For several months now, unknown to most for the reasons hinted
> at above, we have been patching up the distribution using a CVS
> repository . . . it's about time what we confessed, came clean, and
> opened this up to a lot more people.

> I'm busy with personal matters over the weekend, but on Sunday or
> Monday I'll re-enable the anonymous CVS repository (installed and
> tested some time ago now), and post instructions on how to access it to
> check out the current kit. Robert may have more to say on this matter,
> and has advised me that he will prepare a WWW page with all the details
> once I sort them out. I'd like to apologise to you all for the
> pace at which we've been moving on code-related stuff. I hope you will
> understand that it is because we are takings thing very seriously
> indeed, not the converse.

I'm prepared to accept that response, having been given no reason to
think the contrary.  I expect that there are some people out there who
will be slightly less so inclined.

To those people, I suggest:

Call VAR CITY, and find out what the _distributor_ price is for an
Enterprise license for Faximum...

Nuff said?

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
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