On 2/26/06, Jonathan Revusky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Towards the end of the skit it is revealed that Cyril is some kid's pet > hamster. > > Surely you see my point. The very "seriousness", the formality around > the pet hamster's funeral makes it far more of a joke than it could ever > be otherwise. Likewise, the "concept of release" can be serious and all, > but if the thing being released is something of a joke, some abandonware > that was left in some half-baked state, doesn't all the "seriousness" > just make the whole thing even more of a joke?
It doesn't seem like a joke to Cyril's owner. Users of DVSL won't be happy to learn that the binary jar in the Maven repository they have been depending on is not reproduceable; there's no source and there's no tag in CVS. There's an informal promise from the ASF (and open source in general) that binaries are released with source; there's no promise that projects will be kept in active development when the community is not interested. Fortunately your use of the term 'abandonware' above makes my point for me - there is no such thing as abandonware in open source, a user is free to continue on if the community in general stops being interested. However in this case, it is abandonware. There was a binary-only release (in fact, 4 of them, with 6 dated snapshot releases) - meaning the users are dependent on shifting sand when it comes to supporting themselves. Hen --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
