1 new of 547 responses total.
Several points. I'm starting to get really leery of major software components that only one or two staffers can fix, install, whatever. This is certainly the case with PicoSpan, and for legal reasons; it's not even a question of technical knowledge (which could presumably be transferred)! Surely that's bad. What's more, it's not at all clear to me that we have a legal license for it. But let me ask this: why is PicoSpan still `closed source'? I don't think there are too many people running it. Would it be possible to ask the holders of the intellectual property to release it under an open source style license? Or under a dual-license so that non-profits can use it for free? That would eliminate the problem once and for all. But even then, I'm not sure that's going in the right direction. Something like frontalk, which works across machines, is in my opinion where we should be directing our efforts. Mail isn't a big deal. Give me a day and I'll have it set up. But the time for elaborate spec writing and endless back and forth has passed: we've used up our time trying to create a system that satisfies everyone, and in the end, we've satisfied no one. Let's just start from a few basic guiding principles, a reasonable design, and go from there. If some aspect or other of the system isn't to someone's liking, too bad; at least we'll have a place to start addressing that person's concerns from.
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