From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/28551 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Pinard?= Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: A New Year's Resolution Date: 04 Jan 2000 07:35:39 -0500 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035165378 30457 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 01:56:18 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 01:56:18 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ding@gnus.org Return-Path: Original-Received: from spinoza.math.uh.edu (spinoza.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.18]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id BFAD1D051F for ; Tue, 4 Jan 2000 07:38:02 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by spinoza.math.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id GAB11881; Tue, 4 Jan 2000 06:37:51 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Tue, 04 Jan 2000 06:37:47 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from mailhost.sclp.com (postfix@sclp3.sclp.com [204.252.123.139]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA24121 for ; Tue, 4 Jan 2000 06:37:34 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca (rtsq.grics.qc.ca [199.84.132.81]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id AA9C9D051E for ; Tue, 4 Jan 2000 07:35:58 -0500 (EST) Original-Received: from ariel.progiciels-bpi.ca by jupiter.rtsq.qc.ca (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id HAA08874; Tue, 4 Jan 2000 07:36:28 -0500 Original-Received: from iro.umontreal.ca (uucp@localhost) by ariel.progiciels-bpi.ca (950413.SGI.8.6.12/950213.SGI) via UUCP id HAA06170; Tue, 4 Jan 2000 07:40:01 -0800 Original-Received: from titan.progiciels-bpi.ca.progiciels-bpi.ca (unknown [199.84.132.86]) by icule.progiciels-bpi.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 40776309B; Tue, 4 Jan 2000 07:35:41 -0500 (EST) Original-To: wjhardaker@ucdavis.edu X-Face: "b_m|CE6#'Q8fliQrwHl9K,]PA_o'*S~Dva{~b1n*)K*A(BIwQW.:LY?t4~xhYka_.LV?Qq `}X|71X0ea&H]9Dsk!`kxBXlG;q$mLfv_vtaHK_rHFKu]4'<*LWCyUe@ZcI6"*wB5M@[m Lars> Is there any point in responding to mail that more than 4 months old? Hmph! 4 months is really nothing... :-) :-( When I got `tar' maintenance (which I do not have anymore :-), `tar' maintenance has already been put on hold for quite a long while. I received with it a huge backlog of accumulated problems, thousands of them. I read in all these reports a lot of frustration from users having had the impression of writing into a black hole. So, I made a point to reply to every message while I was processing it, _however_ old it was. Then, John Gilmore, the original `tar' author, sent me his own collection of accumulated messages, which was another big lot, and generally much older. I merged everything. I surely solved many thousands of messages, and just to keep the rope tight, also received thousands of new messages. Many single messages did require a great deal of work. `tar' is by far the most demanding package I ever took care of, if you consider all the overhead it takes to do a proper job. It was impossible for anyone-not-being-Lars to reply timely to everything. Yet, when one installs a patch in 1998 for a problem first reported in 1989, one feels strange while acknowledging the contribution to the submitter! :-) Even then, my opinion is that we should never dismiss a user report, and that even if some problems solve "themselves" over time, some just do not. P.S. - My main hope is that `tar' is much more _maintainable_ now that it originally was, the job should be more pleasurable to the new maintainer. -- François Pinard http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard