[Pan-users] Re: Is this project still alive?

[Ben Bullock]

On Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:37:05 +0000, Duncan wrote:

> JCA <address@hidden> posted
> a10b0c8a0806190627t6354e362q31562bc8cdeacdfd-JsoAwUIsXosN
address@hidden, excerpted
> below, on  Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:27:50 -0600:
> 
>> Version 0.132 came out some 10 months ago. Is this still being
>> developed?
> 
> Well, yes, but not really at the moment.

Has anyone heard from Charles Kerr about this?

> Really, what Charles needs is a couple other developers to work with
> him on pan, helping to fill in the dead periods, while still
> allowing him to come along every couple years and really go to town
> on things. 

Has Charles expressed an opinion about this at all?

> However, I've been a regular on the pan lists/groups for
> years now (since 2002 IIRC) and it hasn't happened yet.  There was a
> guy (Chris) that helped for awhile, but he was very much either
> minor, or simply behind the scenes.  Charles was still the primary
> developer.

I wonder what's happened to Chris now?

> I'm not sure why this has been the case, whether Charles is hard to
> work with, or whether the area simply doesn't interest most
> developers enough to do more than submit an occasional patch, but
> that's the way it has been. 

In order to work with Charles, the first step would be getting his
permission to make modifications. Has anyone actually applied for
permission to him?

> Of course, as most newsgroup folks already realize, NNTP itself is
> relatively obscure; nothing like web browsers or mail clients, for
> instance, so maybe it /is/ simply lack of interest. 

Another problem is that one of the big uses of Pan seems to be for
binary newsgroups. I don't even have access to binary or alt
newsgroups - it's hard for someone like me to take responsibility for
something which I can't even test.

> I just wish I
> had the necessary skills to contribute at that level, but I don't,
> so I simply stick around here and contribute what I can, help on the
> pan lists/ groups.

Well, you seem to be able to compile the newsreader from source code,
apply patches and so on.

> Oh, well.  It is what it is.  Either people with the skills are
> interested enough to take a major and continuing interest, or not,
> and it appears not, so Charles continues his mostly solitary
> developership, and we that lack the coding skills to do more,
> continue to deal with the on and off pattern, because he's providing
> the code and we're not.

I'm not sure whether you're suggesting a fork of the code or not.

It's quite a big decision to do that, and it would be a very nice
thing to talk to Charles Kerr beforehand.