FreeLists / arachne / [arachne] Re: THE ARACHNE DEVELOPMENT DEBATE

[jasorn <jasorn@xxxxxxxxx>]

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

Brian C. Murphy wrote:
> Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!
>
> I have been following with some interest the raging debate between the 
> "conventional Arachne developers" and the "Ray Andrews and Associates 
> developers". As a very unskilled programmer, I admire and am thankful 
> for the efforts of both groups, as well as the earlier endeavours of 
> Michael Polock.
>   
I am a skilled program, albeit c/c++ is not really my bag.  I did give a 
go at getting arachne to compile in linux but didn't get too far.  
Normally my thoughts are along the lines of, "It's foss, fork as often 
as you like."  I haven't looked at Ray's but what I saw at in the main 
coupled with the fact that Ray's confidence is high and nobody's spoken 
up to refute his assertion his code is all around 'better', makes makes 
lean towards thinking he's right.
Assuming so, this is a good illustration of what I like about open 
source.  Others are free to take it and make it better!
Code beauty aside, there are a couple things that sort of put me off 
arachne in general.  Why do I even still participate in this discuss?  
The first is that it's been stated that arachne won't be able to support 
the functions we all know are keeping from being the ONLY browser we 
need.  My impression from Ray's statements are that with his code these 
functions might well be possible.  The second is the statement Ray made 
about taking the posix conditionals out. 

Those missing functions and the posix stuff combined with dos seems to 
me to be the minimum requirements for either project long term.
Assuming that objectively Ray's code is indeed better from the 
maintenance and performance perspective, my advice is to join forces and 
use Ray's code base as a starting point for the new collaboration.  Or, 
put up the goods and show why the main arachne is the best.
Or not!  That's the great thing about oss.

Curious if Michael Polok has seen Ray's code and offered opinions.
                 Arachne at FreeLists                  
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