PanoTools:
Re: New poll for PanoTools
Steven Dowd 2005-Mar-17 14:12:59
Bruno,
I do agree with what you say, the point that worries me, is the situation
where the goodwill of all the posters is transfered into what could quite
easily become a commercial vehicle, this would not be the case if the egroup
was left at yahoo.
I think what John has dome with the panotools.info is basically the same as
a fork in a gpl community, but as he controls the original egroup admin, he
is not simply forking, leaving the original community intact, but forcing
the fork.
Suggesting that all people will be transfered over to the new system is all
very well and good, suggesting that no one would loose out is all very good,
but it then ties the community to john totally, as he is the owner of
panotools.info, where-as the communty is to some extent safe guarded by
being with yahoo, thats not forgetting the fact that john could kill off the
yahoo egroup or close it to posts or whatever, not suggesting he would, but
at least we all know yahoo isnt going to close overnight, also yahoo is
free, it doesnt cost to have the egroup at yahoo, it does need admin work,
but i think it would have been better for john to just ask for help on that,
aand maybe then setup panotools.info as a true fork, in the gpl world this
happens all the time, some people go one way or another, some join both
groups or many as they themselves fork, but the common thing in most of
these forks is their relience on a neutral host, in most cases I would
suggest this is sourceforge. Here we have the possability of john closing
down totally the yahoo egroup in preferance to his panotools.info system so
capturing the whole membership into a system which we then are stuck with no
matter whether he in 1 or 2 years decides should be a total pay system..
John might say this will never happen, but when the yahoo egroup started,
and over the last few years, I doubt anyone would have thought he would come
out with some of the last two weeks statements.
I didnt want to setup the poll to determine the for better or worse of
mailman or yahoo email list systems, I wanted to find out, how many people
just want the egroup to stay at yahoo, not tied into "someones personal
website".
John has stated before now that after the changeover he is not going to kill
off the yahoo egroup name, or pass ownership to any other person, that he
plans to sit on the name, not releasing it. keeping it as a closed down
group, offering anyone that wishes to join the details to his, not the word
"his" panotools.info website.
John is doing a great job with panotools.info, i havnt ever said anything
bad about it, but I have said I believe it should be a seperate 'forked'
system.
The poll was not whether we should ask john to give over ownership of the
yahoo system, and it was not whether he should ask for moderators, I believe
if the results of the poll as it is, show that people want to stay at yahoo,
"as far as the mail list goes", then maybe those topics will be raised in
further polls, what people have to consider is whether they want to
contribute freely into what could at the flick of some online switch
instantly become a massive commercial vehicle for John.
When you sit and think about things, at the moment the yahoo egroup has some
1800 members, if 50% of those end up contributing 25 dollars, it will raise
22,500 dollars. thats 62 dollars per day, say 1 > 3 hrs per day of admin
work on memberships and emails. its not a bad evening job for anyone, not
considering that most all, if not all the content is freely given to the
website ..
Maybe 50% of people contributing is massively to high a figure, the point
that worries me is that the egroup is being shepherded towards a system
which is totally under one persons control. wheras a yahoo system with
co-owners and or moderators, would always be a free , and I would suggest a
fairer more gpl way to run what is afterall a gpl community.
So the poll I would suggest is a fair choice, stay as per now at yahoo, with
at least a buffer to any commercial use of the egroup by its owner, or close
and move totally to johns panotools.info system and hope things stay the
same?
again, these are my views and I apologise if they offend anyone, and John, I
do commend you on what you have done, and what you plan to do, but as I have
said it does worry me.
Steven Dowd
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruno Postle" <#removed#>
To: "Immersive Imaging" <#removed#>
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2005 11:55 AM
Subject: Re: [PanoTools] New poll for PanoTools
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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