Duncan, Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:35:55 +0000 (UTC): (...)
> Not that I know of. He apparently ignores both the user and the devel > list for long periods of time -- the .nzb file buffer overflow was posted > to the devel list with no answer, except from us users and some > distribution pan package maintainers. On the bug, the GNOME folks bumped > the bug priority to the highest possible and marked it security, and > you'd /think/ if /anything/ would get a response /that/ would, but not a > peep. Basically the same with the gcc-4.3 patch and the glib 2.16 bugs > and patches. In fact Charles did some bug triaging in Pan's part of the GNOME Bugzilla earlier this year, in January more precisely if I recall correctly. But I haven't noticed any other progress since then. (...) > I *DO* know that Charles is (or was for a time after he went silent here) > still active on other GNOME projects. I forget the name of it ATM since > I'm normally a KDE person, and all of this is second-hand from a pan user > that follows GNOME in general, but there's a GNOME torrent app that had > evidently been going pretty slow that Charles evidently either adopted or > submitted a whole bunch of patches for (in a classic Charles "great guns" > phase), that ended up being absorbed and advancing the app quite some > distance in a relatively short time. However, even that was probably six > months ago now, and I've no idea what has happened since then. Yeah, I do know that too. :-) This program you're talking about is Transmission, right? <http://www.transmissionbt.com/> It's not a GNOME project/application though. Transmission only provides a GTK+ GUI, in addition to others. And looking at the Transmission's source code web viewer, it seems Charles is quite active there: <http://trac.transmissionbt.com/browser/trunk/> (...) > You may also wish to contact the GNOME folks and see what they might > suggest, particularly given the security bug and inaction on it to this > point. Certainly, they must have some interest in at least having > someone that would do security and preferably gcc/glib type update > patches. Again, preferably not to fork, but at the minimum, someone who > could work with Charles and have commit privs for security and toolkit/ > toolchain updates. One would think that's pretty critical, and it's not > being addressed at this point, so at least getting it addressed should be > in the interest of everyone in the community, including Charles. It's sad to see Pan seriously heading toward un-maintenance, abandonment and, let's say, obscurity. But as far as I know, the GNOME project itself has no policy regarding the maintenance or, better say, dealing with an un-maintained module, if it's not a GNOME critical/official one. Pan is neither former nor the latter. It's up to maintainer and/or skilled-enough volunteers to not let the project die. Speaking of GNOME policies, if, after some time, a module can be definitely considered un-maintained, then its SVN repository is moved to <http://svn-archive.gnome.org/> - the name says it all. However, not even the SVN repository of old Pan has been moved to this archive till today - maybe because it's considered a project's last stable release, new Pan being only in beta stage. <http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/pan/> So, what I think Pan users can do with this situation: Without maintainer's (i.e. Charles's) consent, any code change should be considered as no-no, with exception for l10n work, of course. With his blessing, those with a GNOME SVN account can at least apply the afore mentioned patches. Or branch the trunk and continue with some other bits of development - that means at <http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/pan2/branches/>. Maintainer may incorporate the branch changes after his return to the project. Or, with the same intention, set up a new repository making use of a well-known public service like SourceForge, etc. Speaking for myself, I'm one of the GNOME translation coordinators, so I can help with applying patches or branching, but that's all, unfortunately. Best, Petr Kovar _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
