This is from the SmartList list originally. I'm crossposting this intriguing discussion to both lists for the time being; I suppose this really could move to procmail-dev properly (nobody complained when I proposed to use that list for discussions like this). Thus, I also include procmail-dev, and direct followups there.
On Thu, 17 Aug 2000 02:35:17 -0500, guenther+smartlist@gac.edu wrote:
Charlie Summers charlie@lofcom.com writes:
At 11:01 PM -0400 8/16/00, Philip Guenther is rumored to have typed:
The maintainer is not the leader. The job of maintainer is to express the concensus desire in a machine readable form.
Since you appear to be doing the bulk of the coding, you are indeed the "leader," whether you necessarily want to be or not.
This is where I see what happened as telling about the procmail & SmartList communities: who was there to take on maintainence of either of these packages? How many people at that point had submitted more than one patch or chunk of code to either procmail or SmartList?
I think this could be fixed. If you look at some of the people on the SmartList list, they have already contributed stuff which would at a minimum be suitable for inclusion in the distribution as a contrib/ "use at your own risk" directory or something. It was never sent in for consideration (as far as I know) but work has been done, and some of it really should be included in one form or another (subscriber verification for SmartList, for example -- it should be standard and turned on by default!)
What this operation truly lacks is coordination. Some of the blame falls on me; I'm listed as something like "volunteer coordinator" in the README file -- but nobody ever really asked me if I would accept that title or role (although in some ways it was implicit).
Anyway, I'm willing to take up that challenge, in principle, but right now I'm probably too overloaded with "real work" to be able to contribute anything meaningful.
I think we should have another IRC chat with Stephen and the other folks who originally were interested in the procmail.org idea, perhaps in early September. I can volunteer to write up an agenda, based on earlier messages in this thread. I can also call Stephen and ask him what day and time would be suitable (or Philip, if you're going to call him anyway at some point, can you bring this up?)
I'll try to monitor these lists a little bit more actively over the next few weeks, but it would help me keep focused if there would be "procmail.org" in the Subject line of everything pertaining to this.
The list at the bottom the README file would seem to indicate that you could count those people on one hand, and that's still true today. To ensure stability, that number should probably be greater than 20, with at least a handfull (not one!) having write access to the source.
I'd be in favor of giving Whom It May Concern some sort of write access, and see what comes of it. If (whoever will be running) procmail.org is not willing to put up an Anon CVS server, it can be moved to sourceforge.net or something.
The "official" releases would of course have to be coordinated and controlled but right now, I think I would personally at least see a more straightforward way to send in patches and have people try them out on their own risk.
It appears that the SmartList and procmail communities are too small, too content, too busy, or too inexperienced to _sustain_ Open Source development. Until those conditions disappear, procmail and SmartList will be in danger of becoming unmaintained. The status of the lists is just a reflection of this.
With better planning, you can do wonders. The problem is, planning is boring and "eats up" enthusiasm. But I think a good agenda and some shared goals would be a way to get this thing started again. If you can see others contribute, you will have more incentive to send in your own little suggestion, too. Bootstrapping this process -- finding and coaching the first contributors -- is perhaps not "fun" but it can lead to more and better fun down the road. :-)
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