nmh-workers
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: MH cleanup and coordination

1996-03-28 18:03:54
For me, the problems are:

- The rate that new releases have come out.  I believe that John is
  still the manager of an overworked computer support group at UCI.
  He has a family, too.  My guess is that it isn't easy to juggle
  those duties and also maintain MH!  But, whatever the reason, the
  first MH release in *two years* was only a minor patch release.
  Almost two months later, the final 6.8.4 release still isn't out.

- IMO, the development process isn't very cooperative or inclusive.
  The mh-workers list is basically dead a lot of the time.  People have
  posted worthwhile ideas here and on mh-users; some very useful ones
  didn't make it into 6.8.4 (beta).  After 6.8.4 beta came out, there
  was almost no discussion.  I found some fairly serious bugs and
  reported them; no one commented.  To get anything changed, we send
  mail to bug-mh; UCI decides whether the change will happen and when;
  there's basically no discussion.  (BTW, I emailed John directly for
  his comments ten days ago and called today; no answer yet.)

Is it right that UCI controls the process, and are we satisfied with
the way it works?  (Maybe there *are* only a few concerned users!
This thread hasn't generated much discussion.)  MH is in the public
domain, eh?   Even if UCI is the official maintainer, is now the time
for MH users to vote for cooperative development, with or without UCI?
I've argued against the idea of a separate non-UCI version before, but
my mind is changing...  The alternative seems to be juggling a bunch
of patches, like the Linux fixes that (eh?) are still needed for 6.8.4,
and waiting for UCI to release something official.  Am I overreacting??

Should MH evolve faster?  Who should do it?  Do many MH users care?

--Jerry, jerry(_at_)ora(_dot_)com


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>