Re: qmail-1.03: any volunteers?!

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2001 at 03:16:27PM -0700, friedman_hill ernest j wrote:
>
>Here's the begining of a simple mkfifo implementation for Cygwin.  I
>did this about a year ago. I went so far as to get the paperwork
>approved to let me sign this over to Cygnus. I tried to get some help
>from this list on how to integrate it with Cygwin, but was met with
>sufficiently rude and unhelpful responses that I abandoned the project
>(I suspect this happens to quite a few folks who are interested in
>contributing, but don't have the free time to devote to untangling the
>Cygwin "kernel" source themselves. But I digress...)

I just searched the archives for some evidence of a "rude" response.
I couldn't find any.  I did find that you often post intelligent and
insightful messages to the cygwin mailing list, so I'm not inclined
to just dismiss this allegation as YA cygwin crackpot.

You also complained about this in February and seemed to insinuate that
I'd rudely told you to buzz off when you sent me personal email.  So,
since this is the second time that you complained about this issue, I
thought it would be interesting to see what I said that you took such
exception to.

You asked me if you could send me something for comment.  I replied:

* I'd prefer if you posted either the patches or pointers to your sources
* to cygwin-patches.  Then, DJ, Corinna, and whomever else is interested
* can look at them.
* 
* Also, before we can accept your patches (or possibly even look at them)
* you'll need to fill out and return an assignment form which is located
* at http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/assign.txt, if you have not
* already done so.  I apologize for the legal mumbo jumbo which makes this
* a requirement.

This was in July 2000.  I pinged your legal department on October 22.
You responded on October 27 with a URL for your patches which were still
a work in progress.

You also, again, asked for some techical details and mentioned that you
were going to somehow find a way to post to the mailing lists despite
the fact that you were currently blocked by ORBS.  I can't find any
response from me, so I probably dropped the ball on this.  I probably
would have again suggested moving the discussion to a mailing list,
though.

I can't find any rude responses to your requests for help in the cygwin
mailing list.  I can't find any responses at all, actually.  I don't see
any requests for help so either google.com and cygwin.com are broken, I
am not using the correct search terms, or you are misremembering what
happened.

The end result here is that we've lived without named pipes for more
than a year when your code could have been posted to cygwin-patches,
subjected to peer review, and potentially incorporated into the cygwin
DLL.  If you had sent your patches to cygwin-patches then it is entirely
possible that someone else besides me would have made it an issue to try
out your patch and offer comment and you would not have had to suffer
with my imperfect email response skills.  That's one of the reasons why
using a mailing list is the preferred methods for submitting patches
throughout free software land.

I suspect that I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know
since you consistently post clueful responses here.  I'm just somewhat
at a loss at your apparent bitterness which caused you to twice mention
this scenario as if it was a root cause for some major flaw in cygwin
contributions.

Maybe I somehow missed a rude response that soured you on the whole
project or maybe you're just subject to hyperbole.  I dunno.  Whatever
the reason, it's still a shame that your code wasn't made available to
the community.

cgf

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