Re: News about the macro archive

[Peter Simons]

[Note: No technical points in here. I am just flaming.]

Tom Howard writes:

 > Dude! I know a hell of a lot about maintaining a open
 > source project, and yours seems to be struggling badly.
 > Open your eyes. [...]

Hehe. You've lost perspective, Tom. What counts is the
_contents_ of the archive, not the fancy HTML generation.
And as I see it, sf.net seems to be struggling pretty badly
with that.

I have a suggestion: Since you've made lots of cool
improvements to the archive which I totally fucked up with
my unreasonable behavior, why don't you commit these changes
into the sf.net CVS instead? I mean, their directory layout
still matches yours!

Then your work wouldn't be lost, and you could apply your
considerable knowledge to improving that project instead of
mine, which -- let's face it -- is hopelessly lost already.


 > For such a small project, that says so much, but what's
 > worse is that the Guidod's fork is ranked higher than
 > yours (using Google). Doesn't this tell you anything?

It tells me you don't know how to use Google. Just an
example. Search for "autoconf":

  http://www.google.de/search?hl=en&q=autoconf&btnG=Search

Curious, isn't it?

Want something else? Search for "autoconf <stdint>":

  
http://www.google.de/search?hl=en&q=autoconf+%3Cstdint%3E&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=

Now look at the author of the macro that's found in the
number one position. Yes, that a macro _Guido_ wrote. Now
look closely at the URL of the site that's listed first.
Google finds Guido's own macros on my site before it finds
them on his.

And that ranking was assigned _before_ I made all the
improvements to the web site, as you can see easily by
following the link.


 > I'm trying to help you clean up this mess [...].

Thanks, but no thanks. Improve sf.net. You could rewrite the
formatting engine from the scratch maybe? It is written in
Perl already, you see, therefore it is necessarily superior
to the Haskell crap I have been writing, because the
language you write a software in really matters a great deal
for the quality of the solution.


 > [...] so there is only one archive.

Yeah, I'm sure Guido is going to shut down ac-archive.sf.net
any moment now. That's really the drift I have been catching
from his postings.


 > This cannot be done until it provides the features that
 > the users and contributers need. Yes need.

You should stop talking about your own ideas in the third
person, Tom. If _you_ want to do something, then _you_ want
it. Not "the users". The users are several thousand people
all over the Internet, you've never been designated their
spokes-person.

The GNU archive was good enough for sf.net to copy all its
contents for over 5 years, so apparently it can't be _that_
bad, can it?


 > I may have been on the list for a very short time, but I
 > am both a contributor and an user.

What does that gain you? I am a contributor and user of
dozens of other projects too, you know. That doesn't mean
that the people who designed and ran the project for years
don't know more about it than I do.

You assume that you know better how to run the archive than
I do. So go ahead and prove it. Join sf.net and kick my ass
all over the Internet.

>From very recent experience, I can tell you that this
feeling is very satisfying.


 > The reason why your archive is in so much trouble is
 > probably because you show such distain for the opinions
 > of people like myself.

 > BTW nice way to attack the person rather than the topics.
 > Way to go, Peter.

Duh! There you do it again. Of course I was attacking you
personally, Tom. Do you see me wearing a "Saint Peter"
t-shirt? I'll happily apologize for doing it, just explain
to me one thing before I do: How does your statement above
_not_ attack me personally?

When I get flamed, I flame back. What did you expect?


 > All the user really needs is `make install`

They can. And unlike some other archive, the gnu.org
installation doesn't need a special tool to access the
macros once they are installed but works just fine with
aclocal(1). I'm sure you'll find some serious praise for
that achievement.


 >>> If you want to do something with it, go ahead, but
 >>> please do it in a branch.

 > You know I won't. I've already explained that unification
 > is my goal. Creating another branch would only take us
 > further from that.

Then let me be blunt for a change: There is nothing more to
unify. Now that the copying of contents is no longer a
one-way street -- like it has been the last 4 years --, the
sf.net archive doesn't have a single thing that the GNU
archive would need.

Everyone is welcome to join the effort according to the
rules outlined in the policy at:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/ac-archive/policy.html

If you don't like that, use my contents and make a better
site. That's why the stuff is free software. I won't bend
over backwards to accommodate some people's bizarre ideas
about what kind of technical things are "right" or "wrong".


 >>> An Automake-based build system does exist already and is
 >>> found in CVS as well as in the recent release archives.

 > Yes, [an Automake-based build system] is there now, but
 > it was not when I started working on it, was it? It's
 > kind of hilarious that you you can berate my opinions
 > because I've been here for such a short time, yet refer
 > to an existing build system as though is been around for
 > ages, thats being implemented since I joined [...].

Use your head, Tom. Do you think I built the archive
manually for the last six years? Just because I didn't
bother to release the build system doesn't mean it didn't
exist. I actually _told you_ I already had one and that I
wouldn't want you to duplicate the effort. Surprise: you've
been solving a problem that didn't exist. Deja-vu?


 > I might also add, after I added the very same in
 > ac-archive-build.

Yeah, I really needed to be inspired by your staggering
technical expertise. Without the ac-archive-build stuff that
never worked, I would have never managed to put that amazing
build system together:

  dist_pkgdata_DATA = AUTHORS COPYING COPYING-Exception \
                      ChangeLog NEWS README THE.ARCHIVE

  aclocaldir        = $(datadir)/aclocal
  dist_aclocal_DATA = $(M4SOURCE)

  htmldir           = $(prefix)/html
  dist_html_DATA    = $(HTMLDOC)

It really is rocket science.

Peter