PanoTools:
Re: New poll for PanoTools
Bruno Postle 2005-Mar-17 12:55:02
On Thu 17-Mar-2005 at 11:08 -0000, Immersive Imaging wrote:
>
> Do you want the Panotools Yahoogroup to close down, and be moved
> to Panotools.info, or Stay Open and useable as it is at the
> moment?
I'm afraid this is the wrong question. Technically, it doesn't make
much difference: Mailman on a hosted server vs. YahooGroups is
pretty much the same experience for end-users.
The issue is openness and people's wishes to have an open forum.
If we take a fairly narrow 'open source' view, nothing matters so
long as it is possible to fork a project.
This is how wikipedia works. I have no idea who is running the
wikipedia site, but I have no doubt that if it were to shut down,
nothing would be lost and somebody else would take it forward - This
is because the site allows copying and the license encourages it.
(notice that wikipedia hasn't forked, but the possibility that it
could is a strong incentive for the people who run the project to
make decisions that the community can support)
This is the same with the GPL portions of Panorama Tools. At the
moment only a small group of people manage the code on sourceforge,
but this isn't a problem because the license encourages copying, and
it would be easy for somebody else to take a copy of *everything*
and fork the project.
The pano12 library hasn't forked in the last eighteen months,
because the very possiblity ensures that all reasonable code
contributions are accepted and there are no significant changes to
the API.
Now in order for a mailing list to be open in the same way, you need
two things:
1. A full archive of past posts available for anyone to download.
2. Access to the membership list to anyone who requests it and has
been around long enough to obviously not be a spammer.
This level of openness is probably sufficient for the community to
stay together. It can easily be arranged by spreading around the
admin/moderator privileges a bit.
In these circumstances, it really wouldn't matter if the list is
hosted at YahooGroups or panotools.info
--
Bruno
PanoTools Wiki: http://wiki.panotools.org
PanoTools Extended Topic Forum: http://forum.panotools.info
PanoTools PayPal Donation Account: support_AT_panotools.info (_AT_ = @)
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PanoTools/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
#removed#
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/