Subject: Re: Will Pine 3.92 ever be created?

From: [email-masked] (Al Sparks)
Date: 03 Jul 1995 18:33:41 GMT

>>>>> "E" == Edward M Greshko <[email-masked]> writes:

    E> 	However, if you'd like to hurry up the development I'm sure
    E> that the PineTeam would gladly accept a generous (read *large*)
    E> tax deductible donation to hire the necessary staff to make
    E> your wishes come true.

The Free Software Foundation not only accepts tax deductable
contributions (cash), but contributions of time.  In other words, you
can join the team.

What about UW?
  === Al

---

From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 13:27:07 -0700 (PDT)

> contributions (cash), but contributions of time.  In other words, you

Al,
At the first hint of anyone sending us any cash, I'll be happy to inquire
about tax exemptions!

As for contributing time, there is obviously plenty still to do, but it
can get awkard to manage a software project with too many fingers in the
pie.  The key is to find tasks that can be done relatively independently.
For example, quite a few people have suggested having a mailbox driver
that compresses/uncompresses the folders.  This would be a completely
new and separate c-client driver, so it could be developed without any
coordination with/by the UW team... but so far there have only been
suggestors, no volunteers to implement.

Even if there were volunteers, there are quality control and completeness
issues as well.  Suppose, for example, someone contributed a compressing
folder driver.  But it only worked on Ultrix.  What should we do?  Include
it in the distribution, even though many people would be disappointed
and/or complain that it didn't work on their platform?  Or spend the time
to generalize it?  Or include it as contributed/unsupported?  Probably the
latter, until it became something that the folks who pay our bills cared
about, but my point is that even though there's lots of work to be done,
and *maybe* lots of willing hands, it's not always easy to put the two
together in a way that actually reduces the work for the core team.

Still, on the relatively rare occasions we have received bug fixes or
minor enhancements from folks, we've been very grateful to get them.

-teg