Phil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> posted [EMAIL PROTECTED], excerpted below, on Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:12:01 -0700:
> The old Pan DID do this, like any reasonable newsreader should. But in > their wisdom the developers actually *removed* this expected feature in > the new C++ Pan. So if you want it, "upgrade" to old Pan. That's not really correct. The new/C++ pan is a rewrite from scratch, so no feature has been removed, it simply might not have been added to the rewrite yet. Additionally, an anti-bloat strategy Charles took was that any "extra" features in old-pan weren't added to the rewrite unless/until they were requested. If nobody's using them, save the code and complexity, and let the previous feature RIP. For over a year there were nearly weekly betas. Those who tested and got their requests in early generally got their features. Those who didn't... well... didn't. > I posted some time ago requesting this feature be put back. Looks like > it hasn't been. Some time ago? After (as I said) over a year of nearly weekly betas, Charles took a well deserved break. That has been about 9 months now, IIRC, and during the last six months or so of the weeklies, he wasn't for the most part actively implementing new features but rather, beating the bugs out of the existing code. So how long ago /was/ it that you asked, and how active were you in finding others that wanted/needed the feature as well? Just one request is easy to pass off; many, not so easy. > I hate to whine about any useful open source project, > but the field of available linux newsreaders is quite small and on this > one development is certainly slow .... > Is there a need to add developers to the team, presumably fluent in C++? > If so, has there been a call for volunteers? I'd say there's some need, yes. Charles is great when he's active, but he tends to go in spurts. The weekly betas were great, but that was after over two years when to all outside appearances the pan project was dead, as he did the rewrite privately, nobody seeming to know what was going on. Now, it has been another nine-ish months (I believe, I've not been counting, exactly) of little externally visible (even in SVN, which I run) activity again. I'm sure he was burned out, but... So yes, some good C++ coder help would probably be a good thing, and could help to stabilize development. I honestly can't say how easy Charles is to work with at that level, or whether indeed he'd let someone take the lead during his "off" pulses or in general. I do expect that anyone wishing to work cooperatively would need a strong appreciation for some of the current pan goals and development rules -- in particular, Charles has spent a LOT of time and effort on getting and keeping pan's 100% GNKSA certification, and if anyone has proposals that might change that, he's made it quite clear it'll take a hostile fork to do it. I believe all the project and list regulars support that stance (I absolutely do), or they'd not be regulars. I believe the problem has been that to most of the world, including most C (old pan) and C++ (new pan) developers, apparently, NNTP is pretty much a dead protocol. For some reason, that seems even more so in the FLOSS world, maybe partly due to the fact that many of the closed source NNTP client projects are either pay software or support specific pay sites and their featureset (as was the initial nzb story, if I'm not mistaken, tho it's open enough it has become more or less a working standard now, if not an official one); IOW, it seems there's simply not enough interest to create a viable FLOSS NNTP community. Actually, that applies to servers as well altho there may be justification there for financial sponsorship, as it seems NNTP server software development is pretty stale too, with no REAL current FLOSS community pressure on High Winds, the main proprietary/commercial player in the NNTP server market. And they could really USE some competition, as their product certainly has the performance when it's tuned and working in peak form, but it seems to be extremely difficult to keep tuned and working in that peak form, as users of servers running it can well attest. Really, the obscureness of NNTP remains both a curse and a blessing. For binary users, the obscureness and somewhat the inefficiency of the protocol and relative difficulty of use of the clients, has been what has kept it off the radar of the various censors, be they copyright cops or political or moral censors. Were it ever to reach the popularity of say the various P2P apps, it'd be heavily targeted, and would have likely gone the way of Napster and the other more centralized server systems, for much the same reasons. However, that very obscurity has kept it amazingly useful for those that know about it and have the patience and skills to work the system. The thing is, however, that there's a dynamic balance. Every time it starts getting attention, the censors and spammers come in, dropping the attraction once again. That drops it into relative obscurity once again as the cost for payoff ratio for the ordinary joe gets too high. Of course, that reduces the relative interest of the censor forces as well, who find bigger fish to fry, leaving it in peace long enough to become slightly more effective and draw more attention once again, thus repeating the cycle. So the obscureness and with it the relative scarcity of development resources is both a blessing and a curse. To be sure, if we suddenly got all the development and user attention we wanted, we'd soon find the protocol not worth our time. But that will never happen because the balance will be dynamically forced back toward relative obscurity (and thus usefulness only for the few who know) before it ever reaches that point. But that's a digression from the topic... Anyway... Yes, FLOSS could really use some attention in the area of NNTP clients, and certainly pan as such a client is no exception. If you are a developer or have developer resources at your disposal and are interested, I'd certainly urge you to contact Charles and talk things over. Whether it'd come to a fork or not, I really don't know, but either way, pan could certainly use more developer resources devoted in a steadier fashion than Charles has proven able to give, alone (or even with Chris' help, tho I don't know how active he has been since the rewrite). Meanwhile, there are a few other alternatives. klibido is the big one for binary harvester (or bnr2/3 if you don't mind open source based on a closed and now deadended on Linux compiler system, Borland's Kylex/ Delphi), and there are a decent number of text client alternatives. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
