Re: OT: Roland Puntaier / "getmail6" drama

Dear Richard,

Il 27 ottobre 2021 alle 19:18 Richard Unger ha scritto:
> Had Charles been easier to work with, I am sure Roland would have managed
> this in a more cooperative way, but given the way things are, we should
> thank him for taking on this effort, and not bash him for it.

But this is not about Charles being grumpy (he is, and helpful too), or
a mismatch of communication styles (there are) or development methods, or
software for the 21st century.

The thing Charles is asking is «please use another name which won’t cause
collisions». How difficult can it be to do that, but more importantly
how difficult is it to understand why a developer would be concerned about
something not developed by him being mistakenly attributed to him?

> Such is the nature of open source: if the original developers aren’t
> servicing the community, someone else can step up, and this is what
> Roland did.

Without squatting namespace would have been better, even though I am
happy that someone is looking into python3 porting.

> Perhaps after 23 years it is time tor Charles to retire, and hand the
> getmail torch on to those who want to make it work well with current
> systems/distros. In this way, he would also not be bothered by the
> support requests any more.

Perhaps after 23 years Charles can and will decide by himself; Roland
et al. are free to clone the repo, slap a new name on it, spam it
everywhere.
I use numerous programs which are derived from other unmaintained apps —
not that getmail is unmaintained —, each fork had the common sense
to change its name (e.g. newsbeuter → newsboat).

I am pretty sure that everything can be solved amicably and productively
and eventually there will be a Big Merge™. The first step is a simple,
painless, overt «this is not getmail» note.
—F