Re: Unresponsive module authors
Patrick Mulvany wrote: Subject Clone 0.13 cuases Segfault Created Thu Mar 20 04:40:43 2003 Updated Sun Sep 7 02:33:41 2003 Got fixed in the end but ended up replacing the module with a equivilent (storable). Gook luck Paddy There's more than one way to do it. Some of them work ti'
Re: Unresponsive module authors
On Thu, Sep 25, 2003 at 10:56:56AM +0100, Nick Cleaton wrote: On Thu, Sep 25, 2003 at 10:45:13AM +0100, David Cantrell wrote: What's the etiquette for dealing with unresponsive module authors? I've found rt.cpan.org very handy for that. One author failed to fix security problems in response to emails for over a year, but had a new version up within a couple of days being RTed about it. But even that can take some time depending on the author. Heres one I did earlier :- http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bug.html?id=2264 Subject Clone 0.13 cuases Segfault Created Thu Mar 20 04:40:43 2003 Updated Sun Sep 7 02:33:41 2003 Got fixed in the end but ended up replacing the module with a equivilent (storable). Gook luck Paddy
Re: Unresponsive module authors
On Thu, Sep 25, 2003 at 11:09:16AM +0100, Patrick Mulvany wrote: http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bug.html?id=2264 Subject Clone 0.13 cuases Segfault Created Thu Mar 20 04:40:43 2003 Updated Sun Sep 7 02:33:41 2003 Got fixed in the end but ended up replacing the module with a equivilent (storable). I too have taken ages and ages to fix a bug in one of my modules - nearly a year in one case. However, I did acknowledge receipt of the bug report promptly. I'll do the RT dance and give him a few days to respond. Does RT email the original author, or does it rely on authors regularly checking it? Cos I certainly don't check for RT tickets on my modules. -- Lord Protector David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david If you have received this email in error, please add some nutmeg and egg whites, whisk, and place in a warm oven for 40 minutes.
Re: Unresponsive module authors
Eric Raymond talks about the etiquette of open source software ownership in his article Homesteading the Noosphere (a chapter from his book The Cathedral and the Bazaar: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/homesteading/ I'll quote to save you the trouble of looking: : There are, in general, three ways to acquire ownership of an : open-source project. One, the most obvious, is to found the : project. When a project has had only one maintainer since : its inception and the maintainer is still active, custom : does not even permit a question as to who owns the project. : : The second way is to have ownership of the project handed to : you by the previous owner (this is sometimes known as : `passing the baton'). It is well understood in the community : that project owners have a duty to pass projects to : competent successors when they are no longer willing or able : to invest needed time in development or maintenance work. : : It is significant that in the case of major projects, such : transfers of control are generally announced with some : fanfare. While it is unheard of for the open-source : community at large to actually interfere in the owner's : choice of succession, customary practice clearly : incorporates a premise that public legitimacy is important. : : For minor projects, it is generally sufficient for a change : history included with the project distribution to note the : change of ownership. The clear presumption is that if the : former owner has not in fact voluntarily transferred : control, he or she may reassert control with community : backing by objecting publicly within a reasonable period of : time. : : The third way to acquire ownership of a project is to : observe that it needs work and the owner has disappeared or : lost interest. If you want to do this, it is your : responsibility to make the effort to find the owner. If you : don't succeed, then you may announce in a relevant place : (such as a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to the application : area) that the project appears to be orphaned, and that you : are considering taking responsibility for it. : : Custom demands that you allow some time to pass before : following up with an announcement that you have declared : yourself the new owner. In this interval, if someone else : announces that they have been actually working on the : project, their claim trumps yours. It is considered good : form to give public notice of your intentions more than : once. You get more points for good form if you announce in : many relevant forums (related newsgroups, mailing lists), : and still more if you show patience in waiting for replies. : In general, the more visible effort you make to allow the : previous owner or other claimants to respond, the better : your claim if no response is forthcoming. : : If you have gone through this process in sight of the : project's user community, and there are no objections, then : you may claim ownership of the orphaned project and so note : in its history file. This, however, is less secure than : being passed the baton, and you cannot expect to be : considered fully legitimate until you have made substantial : improvements in the sight of the user community. : : I have observed these customs in action for 20 years, going : back to the pre-FSF ancient history of open-source software. : They have several very interesting features. One of the most : interesting is that most hackers have followed them without : being fully aware of doing so. Indeed, this may be the first : conscious and reasonably complete summary ever to have been : written down. : : Another is that, for unconscious customs, they have been : followed with remarkable (even astonishing) consistency. I : have observed the evolution of literally hundreds of : open-source projects, and I can still count the number of : significant violations I have observed or heard about on my : fingers. : : Yet a third interesting feature is that as these customs : have evolved over time, they have done so in a consistent : direction. That direction has been to encourage more public : accountability, more public notice, and more care about : preserving the credits and change histories of projects in : ways that (among other things) establish the legitimacy of : the present owners. : : These features suggest that the customs are not accidental, : but are products of some kind of implicit agenda or : generative pattern in the open-source culture that is : utterly fundamental to the way it operates. -- Damon Allen Davison http://allolex.freeshell.org/
Re: Unresponsive module authors
On 25 Sep 2003, at 10:45, David Cantrell wrote: What's the etiquette for dealing with unresponsive module authors? I've tried to contact the author of Data::Compare twice now to report bugs, with no response in nearly a month. Should I just upload a new version to CPAN and take over maintenance? There is an answer to this in the CPAN FAQ http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html#How_maintain_module Graham.
Re: Unresponsive module authors
David Cantrell wrote: I'll do the RT dance and give him a few days to respond. Does RT email the original author, or does it rely on authors regularly checking it? Cos I certainly don't check for RT tickets on my modules. Hello, David. As a RT admin (I run one for my company), I can assure you that the RT system is quite annoying on sending emails. It makes a lot of noise by himself. I'm sure that the developer you're looking for will read the messages, or at least notice them (as far as he/she still getting emails from the RT registered mailbox, of course). Putamplexos. -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Luis Campos de Carvalho is Computer Scientist, PerlMonk [SiteDocClan], Cascavel-pm Moderator, Unix Sys Admin Certified Oracle DBA http://br.geocities.com/monsieur_champs/ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Re: Unresponsive module authors
Nick == Nick Cleaton [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Nick I've found rt.cpan.org very handy for that. One author failed to fix Nick security problems in response to emails for over a year, but had a new Nick version up within a couple of days being RTed about it. I dealt recently with an author who has only an autoresponder at his PAUSE-registered email address, telling people to go to a web page to get his *real* email address, hidden as an image. I guess they fail to see why this is both inconvenient and ultimately fruitless. And why they'll never see a bug report from RT, or any of the users of their code. Or any blind user. :( -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/ Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!
Re: Unresponsive module authors
On 25 Sep 2003 at 7:56, Randal L. Schwartz wrote: I dealt recently with an author who has only an autoresponder at his PAUSE-registered email address, telling people to go to a web page to get his *real* email address, hidden as an image. Funny, I just got back from reading http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=292164 (pointed at from a comment I was asked to metamoderate on use.Perl). Or any blind user. :( If it's the person I'm thinking of, they have a text-only version, too (though how screen-reader-friendly it is, I do not know). Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED]
