Michael, Interesting out of the box thinking but I believe any funds at the foundation that we have DO make a real change in the world. In 21 years, we've changed the way computing happens.
There is far too much misinformation. The only reconfiguring of boxes is years away when 4.1 is released. Everything is backwards compatible with aliases and we've got rules published that work for 3.3.1 to 3.4.X. And even if you use 4.0, you will be able to change 1 byte in the code and get the previous rule names. Regards, KAM -- Kevin A. McGrail Member, Apache Software Foundation Chair Emeritus Apache SpamAssassin Project https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmcgrail - 703.798.0171 On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 4:45 PM Michael Orlitzky <mich...@orlitzky.com> wrote: > I'd like to offer a constructive solution to the blacklist/whitelist > argument to the Apache foundation and Kevin in particular. > > There is opposition to this change on at least two fronts: > > * Philosophical: the change does nothing to address the underlying > political problems. Black people are asking not to be murdered; > changing "blacklist" to "blocklist" as the sole response is > insulting and transparently virtue signaling. > > * Practical: the gesture costs the Apache foundation nothing, because > the "gift" is paid for by the labor of the users who have to > reconfigure their systems. > > Whether or not you agree with those bullet points, here's what I propose > to address them... > > The Apache foundation has some cash laying around. Make whatever wording > changes you like, but **at the same time**, donate a meaningful amount > of money to a cause like the ACLU or the defense/medical funds for the > protestors. This addresses the bullet points above: > > * The donation is of real value to the people who receive it, and > addresses the underlying problem in that it helps the people who are > themselves helping in more direct ways. > > * The donation is also of value to the donor, so cannot be considered > a token gesture. > > This will not be free for users: we will all still have to reconfigure > our systems. But if that "wasted" time actually helps the stated cause, > then it's no longer wasted. Knowing that an hour in my text editor may > have helped someone get out of jail or replace an eyeball shot out by a > federal goon makes it much more palatable. In other words, people might > still think it's stupid, but could be willing to suck it up if the > Apache foundation puts its money where its mouth is. > > This surely won't please everyone, but it may be satisfactory to a > majority of people on both sides. Also, it will stop the email threads. > >
