On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 02:07:27AM +0300, Timo Sirainen wrote:

On 7.8.2004, at 07:25, Mark E. Mallett wrote:

[ I hope you don't mind me answering this back on the list; it seems like it's relevant. ]

...

That's probably just a result of my poor communications skills. I did include very brief LICENSE and FUTURE files with the sources, and those files probably led you to that conclusion. For clarification, I do intend that the program be open source, but I feel that there are some things that I should still finish up myself before foisting it off on any potential contributers. It's not a matter of "I don't want you to have it" -- it's more a matter of "I don't feel right burdening you with filling in holes just yet" (for the generic "you"). (That makes it sound like it's not usable: it's quite usable right now. There are just features still left to add.)

Plus, as with many other packages and maintainers, I just want to control any official version.

Well, doesn't that mean that it's currently not really open source? As in I can't modify and re-distribute it (with possibly different name)?

My current goal is to make it mature enough and good enough where people might actually want to do that -- as I say, by finishing up some of the things that are still undone. Also there are a couple of things that are hardwired to the environment here (particularly, the way that the IP addresses are extracted for DNSBL tests), that I felt that I should make more general before making it open.

The latest sources are available online to anybody who wants them, for use in your own environment, for experimentation and trial, but not for redistribution; but indeed if there was some demand I would probably open it up sooner than later. So far nobody has been beating down the door for it (admittedly I haven't really mentioned it in very many places; I think only here and on the bsdi-users list).

But yeah, the plan is to make it so that you can modify it and redistribute it. I don't have any kind of hard and fast position on when, though. I'm sure most anyone could convince me to open it up most any time, if there was good reason to do so.

mm