FreeLists / arachne / [arachne] Re: Unifying the sources

["Udo Kuhnt" <048321887-0001@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

Ray,

>    As Glenn, Eric and Ron have said, some of my improvements have made it
>    back to the std. core, but 99% have not. However, I wonder why
>    the old version is still considered the standard at all when mine is
>    so very much better now. Surely the 'standard' is only the standard
>    because people are reluctant to change, no? If they were willing to
>    move to a better distro, then the issue of compatibility with the old
>    one would not exist at all. For me the question is why don't we
>    all move forward together? All my speed and memory improvements
>    are due to the total rewrite and optimization of the sources,
>    there is no way to move them to the old sources. But why does
>    anyone *want* to use the old sources anyway?  When I got involved in
>    this, I asked Michael Polak what needed to be done. His answer:
>    "It needs a complete rewrite" ... and that's what I have done.
>    The old sources are not only grossly messy, they are riddled
>    with unoptimized and buggy code everywhere -- they need to
>    be retired to archive status not kept up as working code.

if you are asking why anyone would not use your core, I can name a
reason: I have *never* got it to work on my system. Perhaps
compatibility still has its value.

Also, while a fork means an additional choice for users, I consider it
as something like a "last resort" to develop a program in a direction
that the other developers do not like. By forking the code, the
developer accepts that he is on his own from now on, and while there is
always the possibility of backporting some of his work into the main
source tree, the chances for this to happen are getting worse the more
the trees diverge.

Since you were the one who decided to fork the code, it is also you who
must undertake the work of unifying the sources again. You cannot really
expect the other developers to abandon their work just because you
decided to create your own version. Like any GPL project, Arachne
benefits from the idea of team work, and deviating from this is always
counter-productive, no matter how much improvements you have been
working on.

IIRC, you have deleted all of the Linux code from your sources, so
they are not suited for Igors work, and if you cannot provide a set of
patches against v190;J1, integrating your work into the CVS code base
will also be next to impossible. So to me it seems like your rcore.exe
is losing ground, and you do not seem to be willing to reclaim it.

If there is an obstable to unifying the sources, it is probably your
notion that the other developers should move over to your side after you
have deliberately decided to separate from them.

Be happy with your one-man project, but do not expect it to become the
standard unless you are willing to do a lot of work on keeping up with
the team version.

Udo

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