RE: ncurses-4.0 un-announcement

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Von: Eric S. Raymond[SMTP:esr_at_snark.thyrsus.com]
Gesendet: Freitag, 27. Dezember 1996 11:57
An: ncurses-list_at_netcom.com
Betreff: Re: ncurses-4.0 un-announcement

The ncurses mailing list seems not to be very reliable from my point of view.
I got no announcements for 1.9.9g or 4.0, although I was of course aware
that they will come. I'm polling Thomas's ftp site on a regular base, that's the
way I try to be up-to-date.

It's a good thing that 4.0 is out of the door, because it is a good and stable
code base to continue our work. I don't understand the comment why
people think this is for Linux only. But of course we should post it also
on prep.mit.edu/pub/gnu to make clear that this is not the case.

I just want to remind you that a few month ago I already suggested to define
a procedure for the release and further development schedules, but at those
times the situation between Eric and Thomas already was a bit delicate.

As always I vote for an adult and professional behaviour. I'm doing all this
work just for fun as part of my hobby in my spare free time. I really don't
want to deal with such situations. It's enough to deal with politics and inter-
personal problems in my professional life. With ncurses I simply want to
write tiny little code, so please don't disturb me...

Of course I'm pleased that I'm now listed as maintainer of ncurses, although
there was no formal request (active or passive) to become one. But because
I could read the README in the weekly drops and I didn't object I think this
is quite ok. Nevertheless I only feel responsible for my contributions (i.e
menu, forms and the Ada95 binding) and the parts I'm working on (panel and
C++ binding in the future).

If Eric feels himself as maintainer of ncurses and is still doing work on the
project, he should be in the list. When I started to contribute to the project
he was very helpful, I never had problems to get good advise. To be honest,
I sometimes had problems with his coding (you know, wsync...() stuff was
a nightmare). But this may be true for others with my coding... :-)

It is of course his decision whether or not he should be on the list or not,
I suggest to fix that immediately.

The situation with Zeyd is similar. I was very surprised after month of total
silence to get mails from him a few weeks ago, telling us that we should
release. Of course - all the honor and glory for the ncurses development
for Zeyd - but he isn't active since more than a year. So I really believe
he shouldn't be any longer on the maintainer list. This raises also the
question to find a new home for the ncurses mailing list.

Thomas was absolutely right to take the initiative and make a release. I
see him as the primary maintainer, because he's doing most of the
work on the project at the moment. But I still would like to see a more
planned schedule for the next releases. This means we need a kind of
early discussion who want's to contribute what in which time for the
next release. Who want's to fix which known bugs ? I'm prepared to
contribute, but I've not enough time to coordinate such activities. So
if Thomas or Eric start such a task, I'll immediately send a list of what
I want to contribute for ncurses-4.x !

Thomas, you did a great job over the last year to guarantee that ncurses
becomes a tested and well engineered project. Not just a quick hack of
functionality, but a complete, truly portable product free of major bugs.
As far as I'm concerned I try to deliver well tested code to you, but it is
always good to know that there is somebody like you to take it and make
it. I'm quite sure Eric will agree to this statement.

So I hope that the beginning of a new year gives us the opportunity to
bring the ncurses project team into a better public shape and to deliver
a great next version with much less pain than this one.

All my best wishes for 1997

Juergen