Robert Kropiewnicki writes: > I've spoken definitively to no such thing. What Ken Jones will do now > that he has been granted admin access (bravo Tom!) is not at the core of > my argument. My argument is that he has done enough in the past for > vpopmail development to warrant his inclusion as an admin.
I disagree with you there. What Ken did in the past prior to the last six months is sufficient to get him many mentions and many praises. And if he had continued doing the same in the past six months then he would still be project leader. It is those past six months, and the responses from Inter 7 in the past few days, which are critical. I give you a preview of the next UK Olympics Selection Committee meeting... A: who are we going to select for the 1500 metres? B: I suggest Roger Bannister. He was the first person to run the mile in under 4 minutes. He has a proven track record. C: *groan* Bad pun! D: I want to know how he has performed recently. Surely that is important. B: It doesn't matter how he has performed recently. What matters is that he used to be the best! E: Do any of you bozos know that Roger Bannister is DEAD? B: That doesn't matter. What matters is that he once broke an important world record. Therefore we should select him. > Many of the projects I spoke about in terms of personal experience had > more to do with internal infrastructure projects. Actually, it was > projects for external paying clients that would often be the reason they > were put on hold. With any business, the needs of the paying clients > come first. You said it. With Inter 7, as long as people keep paying them to install vpopmail BECAUSE they have their name on the project, their motivation in times of difficulty will be to divert resources to paying clients and let vpopmail development go unattended for six months. In fact they DID let vpopmail development go unattended for six months and only paid attention to it once more when it appeared that the Inter 7 name would no longer be listed as its developer. If it takes that to motivate them into paying attention to this list then they are NOT good candidates for an admin position. Because if they can delete the other admins then we return to a situation where vpopmail development is a lower priority than Inter 7's paying customers and can be neglected for half a year at a time. > For the most part I can agree with this argument. If Ken were going to > have complete and total administrative control again to the exclusion of > Tom, I would completely agree with this argument. As I understand Tom's assessment of things, if Ken has equal powers to Tom then Ken can kick Tom out. As I understand the mail from the Cat, that is something I consider to have a significant probability of happening. > However, as it stands right now, Ken and Tom are both listed as > administrators Can one administrator delete the other administrators? Can one administrator copy the whole CVS tree then delete it? As I understand it, Tom's only defence against a sneak attack of that nature is to maintain his own local CVS tree (which is a pain). Would Inter 7 do anything like that to re-assert the brand ownership of vpopmail so that they continue to be the first port of call for people who have problems and are willing to pay for answers? I don't know. But after the Cat's catty mail and Ken's equivocating mail I cannot deny the possibility. That may be grossly unfair to Inter 7, but they are the ones who control what they did and what they wrote, not I. If what they did and wrote causes me, and many others, to distrust them then that is their fault. If I needed urgent support, so urgent that paying an outside consultant were warranted, then Tom would be top of my list and Inter 7 would be the very bottom, just below the option of selling my soul to the devil for an answer. The position of Inter 7 on my list is absolutely nothing to do with anything that Tom has done and everything to do with what Inter 7 have failed to do for six months and have done for the past few days. As a user of vpopmail, I am no longer happy with an Inter 7 involvement of any kind. -- Paul Allen Softflare Support