[Savannah-hackers-public] Project evaluation sample and info

[Robert Musial]

Howdy,

I was interested in helping out as a Savannah hacker. I already help 
webmaster gnu.org and have a fencepost and savannah account ('rmmm' on 
both).

For my sample evaluation I picked task #14302: Submission of ipblock

If I were responding to it I'd say...

0. That it lacks any information on dependencies. I see they are bash 
scripts. Do they have any requirement of a certain version of bash? Does 
it require anything else? Iptables presumably, what version?

1. It lacks a clear manual or info on how to use it. The README is only 
a few lines. It doesn't explain how it works or what exactly it is 
doing. It says it doesn't work well with Network Manager or DHCP. What 
does it mean to not work well? Will it break my network config? And 
again, that goes back to dependencies.

2. The copyright on the scripts are muddled. It shows these scripts are 
copyright by 2 parties, nixcraft and the submitter. What did nixcraft 
contribute? What did the submitter contribute? Is there a changelog, 
diff, or patch anywhere? How much of these scripts are changed from 
upstream?

3. Further copyright AND dependencies questions: For the scripts to 
work, the scripts download network information from 
http://www.ipdeny.com/ipblocks/data/aggregated/
But in that directory there is a Copyrights.txt file that reads, in part...
"YOU MAY NOW RE-DISTRIBUTE OUR IP ZONE FILES. BUT YOU SHOULD KEEP
THIS COPYRIGHT.TXT FILE INTACT AND DISTRIBUTE IT WITH OUR
ZONE FILES OR FILE ARCHIVES. WE ALSO WELCOME ANY LINKS BACK TO OUR
SITE WWW.IPDENY.COM

YOU CANNOT USE IPDENY.COM COUNTRY IP DATA FOR SPAMMING,
OTHER BULK ADVERTISING AND ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES.

IF YOU OFFER WEB BASED IP TO COUNTRY SERVICE USING OUR IP COUNTRY
BLOCK FILES A LINK BACK TO IPDENY.COM IS REQUIRED."

While that allows redistribution, it does require the copyright.txt file 
be along with it. Does that mean even if you download them individually, 
you must also grab that copyright? Do the scripts need to contain that 
copyright?

Also it doesn't mention anything about being able to modify those zone 
files, and/or redistribute modified versions, which could make it 
incompatible with the GPLv2+ it is licensed under.

Finally, 4. Using the guidelines "We discourage submitting simplistic 
text-only projects" I don't know that this rises to the level of a vital 
GNU package.

--
Robert Musial, address@hidden
GnuPG fingerprint: 9EA5 E7BD 9324 CF13 6C85 6EBB 6C6C 5495 98F0 CEDC