Recap

I'm posting this because emails have been coming in off the list and, while
I've tried to be sure my replies go to the list, it's probably a little
confusing to some who have only seeing part of the conversation.

To recap things:

1) I am back.

What that means, if anything, is yet to be determined but, please, "don't
hassle the crazy guy", at least too much :P

My contact information is:

        Gregory A Lundberg
        362 Chateau Estates Road
        Lavonia, GA 30553
        US

        +1-706-356-4123

        gregory_lundberg at alltel.net

Please keep personal emails off the list, and keep wuFTPd emails on the
list.

I am unemployed, probably unemployable for the foreseeable future (unless
the employer has a staff shrink), and living in my parents basement.  So,
please, no late-night calls: the time zone here is EST/EDT
(UTC -0500/-0400).

For those who care, my diagnosis is "Major Depression with Psychotic
Features".  In everyday terms that simply means if I go off my meds I become
a Zombie, usually going to my room and curling up in a ball, won't interact
with anyone or anything, and sometimes I see shapes or images, or hear
noises, which are not there.  Of course, Better Living Through Chemicals
allows me to function acceptably except under times of high stress or during
discussions of religion or politics.

2) I have talked with Kent and the Resource Center was back online although
I just checked and it appears landfield.com is down again.  *sigh*

Unfortunately the mailing list archives are vastly out of date.  Someone (I
have the email but forget who it was) has said he has most of the traffic
but needs to be sure he's cleaned out personal emails first.  Kent is very
busy, so people with mailing list archives should packages them in tarballs
or zips (Unix mailboxes are best, but I can convert Outlook and Outlook
Express mailboxes if that's all there are).  Get with me and I'll see that
Kent gets them when he's ready for them.  See 4, below.  Please do not email
archives to me.  It would be best to put them where I can download them, but
I could put up an FTP server to receive them if my DSL ever decides to hold
a lease for long enough to make that viable.

3) I have proposed starting a new development tree for Version 3.  What that
means is very much an open question.

My feelings on Version 3 are that it should:

  * support MLST since that is now in the RFC Editor's Queue.

  * optionally support HOST with an Internet Draft being produced as part of
    the effort.

  * be highly modular.  I'm thinking both as a design philosophy and as
    something like Apache modules.

  * support win32 (2000, XP Home and Pro, and, eventually,  Longhorn).
    There has been some objection to supporting Windows.  This is an open
    issue.

  * support OS/X for Apples, assuming OS/X native applications are not
    identical to POSIX applications on Unix (I don't remember).

  * be implemented using C++.  There has been some discussion that the
    language should be C, possibly with API shims to C++.  I see C as a
    subset of C++ these days and prefer to shim down to C instead.  Again,
    this is also an open discussion point.

  * be strict POSIX on Unix platforms.  POSIXly-challenged platforms such as
    Windows (which includes Cygwin, which I'd rather not use if we can avoid
    it) should be shimmed.

  * support platform-specific features such as Windows NT security policies.

  * have a clearly documented API.  I have thought a lot about documentation
    requirements, but my ideas are lengthy and I don't want to go over them
    now.

  * have a GUI.  I suggest Qt because of market share.  Other possibilities
    include wxWidgets, FLTK, GTK+, etc.  There has been little discussion on
    this other than some agreement that a GUI is needed.

  * use XML for the internal configuration file formats.  Preferably using
    one master file and possibly supporting per-(things) configuration(s).

  * use autoconf/automake on Unix.

  * support Microsoft Visual C/C++ projects on Windows, as well as both the
    MS and Borland free C/C++ compilers, mingw, and Dev-C++ projects and
    cygwin as a build environments.  I already have everything except the
    Visual C environment here.

  * support whatever the vendor build environment is for OS/X plus

  * have a painless upgrade path from Version 2.  By this I mean there
    should at least be a program to read your current configuration files
    and produce a working Version 3 configuration offering the same features
    and facilities as your current Version 2 does.

4) I think patches, bug reports, feature requests and improvements from the
past few years should go into the Version 2 code base, possibly leading to
version 2.7.0.

This is why I want mailing list archives.  While I'm not sure I'm up to
programming at all, I'm thinking something like I did with the VR-series to
get as much as possible into the current code while we're designing and
implementing Version 3.

5) I think Version 3 should have a new home.  I would like to use Redhat's
open project system so we'd be hosted with glibc and those guys, but
Sourceforge would be OK.  Eventually, I'd like to get everything off Kent's
hosts and onto one of the free managed-hosting open project sites.  I know
it was a hassle for me, and assume it's been some to Kent, and it's time we
looked at moving.

6) I would very much like to have a "conference" or "convention" for
wu-ftpd.  Since I cannot afford to travel, and refuse to travel by air, it
would have to be in North America so I can Go Greyhound.  I would prefer,
however, to host it here in Georgia / South Carolina.

My hope is that if a few of us get together for a day or two we can get some
direction and excitement behind the project.  Besides, I'd just like to meet
some of you.

Even if a conference doesn't happen, I'd still like to several of you, so
I've also made an open invitation to several of you.  My list of
specifically invited people, with families or significant others, grows as I
see more names I remember in the From lines.

The people below are the ones I'd like most to come for a conference or just
to visit:

    Kent Landfield, wife and kids-not-at-college
    Tuc and girlfriend
    Ted Keller
    Bob Lunkin
    Eilon Grishi
    Sylvain Robitaille
    Bero

For Eilon and Bero, due to distance/cost/visa requirements, I'd like to try
to include you two by IP video or voice.

I've not heard from Bero yet, but would like to.  If anyone has current
contact info for him, please send it to me.

If your name isn't above and you think I should remember you speak up ..