Re: [screen-devel] screen maintainer

[Axel Beckert]

Hi Jo,

On Wed, Apr 02, 2014 at 06:57:39PM +0200, Jostein Berntsen wrote:
[Axel prefers Savannah over GitHub]
> Many valid points there, Axel, and they are important to consider.

Thanks.

> But it might seem like the development at the savannah repository is
> a bit abandonded or have stalled, and that it is notoriously hard to
> get a new release of screen.

Hrm, I do not really understand what you mean by "it is notoriously
hard to get a new release". Is this critism on the software being used
at Savannah or on some bureaucracy happening there?

> I applied for membership at the savannah development site, but did
> not hear anything.

That's a pity and doesn't look good, indeed

I maintain another Debian package of GNU software hosted on Savannah
(GNU Zile) and when I recently asked one of the Zile developers a
question about Savannah procedures, he got a helpful and informative
reply from some Savannah administrator within days. So I had the
feeling that the platform seems quite usable and maintaines.

> And the savannah Gnu Screen site actually
> links to Amadeusz' github site as an active development branch:
> 
> https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/screen/

I know. And I must admit that I was surprised about that, mostly
because it contains some disputable and potentially disruptive
changes.

> So what do you suggest we should do to get a new release of Screen?

Without doing a (more or less hostile) take-over? I don't know.

Jürgen Weigert obviously reads this list and has commit access (and
IIRC is a long time member of the GNU Screen development).

So maybe someone should politely ask him to add specific people to the
Savannah screen group so that they can at least do git commits and
declare releases -- or at least pointing out the right person to ask
that. While it may be annoying in a very active project to get
off-list mails, it may help in more dormant projects, especially on
people like me who filter out a lot of list mails via procmail.

> I believe that is important to keep this great program alive,

Definitely. And bug-fixes and improvents are surely worth it, too,
especially if they keep up with more modern things which are more and
more default -- like terminals with 256 colors or longer user names or
terminal type namesa. (I use 256 colors in mutt inside a Screen 4.0.3
for many years now and it works fine.)

> and that we need a new solution to keep the development vital.

Even if we get an ok to move the development over to another
project/git hosting site (independent of which one), I think declaring
a personal repository as the main development repository is worse than
it can be now:

* What if that person owning the repo loses interest at some point?
* What if that person owning the repo is hit by a bus (keyword bus factor)?

So if screen development moves off Savannah, it should move to a
hosting site which offers organisational accounts. Gitorious does that
since ages, GitHub does it too now for a year or so. Gitlab's hosting
can do that likely, too -- at least our locally installed version can do
that, too. repo.or.cz has no such organisational level AFAIK.

But https://github.com/screen is already taken. (You may want to ask
https://github.com/matnel if that organisational account and the sole
repo in there are still used.)

                Kind regards, Axel
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