ahem. this is not a good response, very, very disappointing. comments below.
At 12:44 PM 9/9/2003, Ms. Catherine Kouzmanoff wrote:
2. "I'm certainly not doing this to be malicious or to hurt Ken and Inter7," Tom Collins.
This is irrelevant and to mention so implies that your intentions may be potentially negative and hostile to community development.
horse manure. it does not imply, *you* are inferring. This is a backhanded attack. He made his statement forthrightly; you attack him for doing so. Truly ignoble.
3. "Ken Jones hasn't contributed to vpopmail and qmailadmin developmeny since March. We've had 12 qmailadmin releases and 7 vpopmail releases since then. Managing the projects on SourceForge keeps everything out in the open, and allows anyone to contribute," Tom Collins.
For seven years, Inter7 has been the original and primary development source for vpopmail, qmailadmin, vQadmin, eps, vQregister, DNSadmin, etc.
so, in support of *your* arguments, you're happy to bring in irrelevancies. This regards vpopmail, period. don't muddy the topic with irrelevant references to other projects you have. Neither is this responsive to the fact that inter7's development of VPOPMAIL has been moribund for quite some time.
The lack of "everything out in the open" is obvious when the intent of Tom Collins is to block the industry standard leader's contributions.
ahem. more inferences. my opinion of inter7 is plummeting. These rhetorical jabs (and self-important huffing and puffing) are inappropriate.
4. "Ken hasn't stated why he wants to be an owner of the project," Tom Collins.
Because he is.
Then you'd better withdraw the GPL license from the work. Or do you not understand GPL?
And without the support and encouragement of the entire community none of this software would be where it is today. Having set the standards and bench marks of performance, reliability, and backwards compatibility for vpopmail and related software, it is imperative to the Qmail community to have the assurance of Inter7 supported software development. Without public ownership of the vpopmail development on SourceForge, this is impossible and brings up many of the concerns that followed this email...
GPL. repeat after me. GPL. ANYONE is free to do what they want with the software, with or without your support, so long as they in turn don't violate the GPL. You chose to release your software via GPL. live with it, or work WITH the community you created when you released the software with that license. So far, you seem to be suggesting that the opposite is the case - the community owes YOU.
5. "Counterquestion: Why do you [Tom Collins] refuse to add him [Ken Jones]?" /Anders
Let us release our infantile dirt and get over our fragile geek egos. The ideologies of free and open source software will crumble under this nonsense. It is the acts of few like Tom Collins that remind big brother corporations like Microsoft how to insult the open source community. As a community, we must join together to support and continue development of free and open source software under the guidelines of mutually beneficial and reliable development standards.
getting very, very thick in here. the above is utterly unprofessional, particularly when you are doing nothing at all that could be characterized as "join[ing] together". You are creating a worse rift than before.
6. Cracking industry standards and disregarding the methodologies that create superior software because of the inherent nature of open source development can have devastating results in the pursuance of its use. If we cannot create an environment of confidence, our politics will ruin future development.
then why has inter7 not supported 'their' software? why didn't inter7 create the sourceforge project? why has development been moribund? inter7 has very definitely not created an environment of confidence in vpopmail. this entire issue would not have arisen had inter7 been responsive to the community, which has been begging for bug fixes for a long time.
7. " (i) Perhaps it'd be valid for the vpopmail community to ask Ken why he hasn't been active in contributing, hasn't openly objected to any of the sucession of patches and release, and now suddenly is muddying the waters with this issue. (ii) When a projects developement seems to die out, a new person should be able to pickup the slack and keep things moving. (iii) If Ken has an issue with that, it'd probably behoove him to let us know why he waited, and where he'd see things going from now," Nick Harring.
i. Inter7 has been in rapid development of several free and open source development projects including the rapid demand for commercial support since the downturn in the economy has popularized Nix based operating systems. The community gains from this development and market creation by being able to be consultants themselves and by knowing that thousands of companies across the globe are hammering away at the very software we need to deem stable.
nonresponsive to the question. a classic rhetorical ruse, but it fails.
ii. It is probably important to Tom Collins that you not think any of this software has "died" out. Perhaps you have only recently started using vpopmail and that is why your opinion lacks in factual substance. Regardless, it would be a far cry to imply publicly, in particular this list, that vpopmail has died out without explicitly detailing your comments as a query. It is comments like this that will spread unfounded fear among newbies researching Qmail solutions.
horse manure. vpopmail has been moribund for a long time. The website has long since stopped pointing to current releases, as there's been no development from inter7. how are you furthering open source when you stop developing the software, then balk when someone picks up your slack in dealing with significant bugs?
anyone who has followed the list has seen that support essentially dried up, with bug reports being ignored. tom picked up the ball that *you* dropped.
none of this said to take anything away from ken jones. not by any stretch.
furthermore - (ii.) is non-responsive to the issue!
iii. Inter7 has made constant headway in the development of free and open source email software for nearly seven years. [Ken Jones has been writing open source software for 19 years.] The obvious ramifications of hosting mailing lists, download portals, and IRC channels means that Inter7 and Ken Jones have never for a single moment stopped supporting community development.
again, non-responsive. development was moribund. that is a fact. it's wonderful that you've been doing this all for seven years, and ken is obviously a tremendously talented guy. that's irrelevant to the question at hand.
8. "... I need to be able to trust the leader of the fork to act in the best interests of the user base, in terms of stability, new features, and an open developement model. Right now that would tend to be Tom, but Ken has only just begun the dialogue, so many he'll be able to settle all of this with what he has to say," Nick Harring.
Inter7 embraces the communal development of all free and open source software. We only ask that Tom join in these efforts.
then work with tom. it involves compromise. period. either that, or withdraw the GPL license on your future releases (if there ever is one), and take out of open source.
9. "but if i had my druthers, i'd like to see tom and ken bury the hatchet and work cooperatively. that implies compromise from both towards a mutually agreeable middle ground," Paul Theodoropoulos.
Inter7 remains supportive of all efforts to enhance the development process. However, we cannot publicly back the development efforts of Tom Collins' work without administrative privileges on SourceForge. It is a time to call together everyone on this list to insist that Tom Collins add Ken Jones or another representative from Inter7. We are all a part of the community development process. Without cohesion, Tom's efforts may be in vain. Tom has great ideas. Tom is putting the efforts into managing the SourceForge development. And if these efforts can enhance and support our open source community, we will show our support.
well, you missed the point entirely. i wasn't issuing an encomium to the community to pressure or force tom collins to do anything. i was making a plea to people's better sensibilities. doing so in a conflict such as this requires, and i'll put it in caps since it seems it was overlooked, COMPROMISE. ken needs to compromise. tom needs to compromise. that's the nature of working in a community, rather than being TWO egos battling it out in public (two meaning ken and tom, ignoring the third ego author of this message).
Tom, give us something we can support. Give our community the name backing it needs to feel confident using the SourceForge new versions.
in other words, tom should rename the project to vpopmail-TNG or some such, since inter7 is clearly not interested in working with the community.
i'm gravely disappointed. i've seen letters to the list in the last year where *your own paying customers* have asked the vpopmail list for help, because your own support staff did not understand the software they were allegedly supporting! this suggests there are serious problems at inter7, when coupled again with the lack of development on vpopmail.
yep, i'm inferring all that from what i see. i could be wrong. before attacking me for it, ask yourself what your intention was with your egregious implications above regarding tom's motives. if you're going to sling mud, better expect some back-splatter.
Paul Theodoropoulos http://www.anastrophe.com
