Re: Recap

On Fri, Aug 26, 2005 at 12:59:00AM -0400, Gregory A Lundberg wrote:
> 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
...[snip]...
> 
> Please keep personal emails off the list, and keep wuFTPd emails on the
> list.
...[snip]...

I've said this in a personal email, but I think this should be said publicly
as well :

I'd like to thank Gregory and Kent for working together to ensure that when
Gregory "went away", the WU-FTPD stuff remained available with as little
disruption as possible to the people who needed access.  Given Gregory's
description of what he's been through, it must have been very tempting for
him just to drop everything; the fact that he cared enough to try to arrange
for some continuity speaks volumes.

Thanks, guys !

> 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*

Yup, I'm getting a gateway timeout again, too.

> Unfortunately the mailing list archives are vastly out of date.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.

That was me.  They are in the standard Solaris (ie. UNIX) mailbox format; one
file for each list, with all the mail inside it.  I will clean them up so they
can be ready for transfer when you and/or Kent are ready for them.

> 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.

I'm not specifically against this, but I do agree with others who have
wondered whether there is a big-enough demand for this on Windows boxes.
But then, if someone is prepared to work on the Windows-capable portions of the
code, I don't see why they shouldn't.  (I'm envisaging a lot of generic code,
with OS-dependent portions where needed here.)

>  * 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.

My personal preference would probably be C with C++ API, but I'm not sure
the choice should made independently of some of the architectural/design
decisions.  For example, if we decide to use other public domain libraries
for some stuff rather than roll our own, this could influence the decision.

>  * 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.

I agree that good documentation will be important.

>  * 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).

I'm not very familiar at all with XML, but I am aware of at least one project
which jumped on the bandwagon based on the fact that it was the "in" thing and
libraries were available, and then regretted it later when none of the
libraries turned out be as useful as they hoped, and all the ones they tried
had some kind or another of unwanted baggage associated with them.  Mind you,
things may have improved by now.  (No names, no pack drill; this is just a
personal observation, not a critisism of the libraries they tried.)

My preference would be straight text with as little markup language as possible.
This does make it easier to hand-edit the file.

But this is a discussion forum, and I can be persuaded otherwise (or simply
ignored or outvoted)...

>  * 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.

You don't mention this, but I also think we should pay very close attention to
security issues from the get-go - in the design, coding and test stages.  The
more secure the server is, and the more confident we are that it is secure,
the better.

> 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.

Seems fair enough, and I suspect the demand is there.

> 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.

Do we care which version control / configuration management system we use
(CVS, Subversion, etc.) ?  Would this affect the choice ?

> 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

It's a good idea.

I appreciate the invite and would love to put names to faces, but this would
depend on the date and location.  (I'm pretty tight on vacation time for the
rest of the year due to other commitments.  Plus, my current job no longer
involves running an FTP server, so I can't justify trying to get the company
to send me.)

Cheers, Bob
-- 
Bob Luckin      [email protected]      "Coder, adapt; FTP Ada, redo C"