Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Why MUAs remain broken (was reply-to foo) to the old mailing list

[Andrew Suffield]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 08:27:04AM -0700, Tom Lord wrote:
> *) Setting up a development environment for it is difficult, time
>    consuming, and resource intensive.   I doubt that it could be
>    done practically on my system, for example.
> 
> *) These particular kinds of changes require too much work to
>    implement.  It's not very fun work, either, because so much of it
>    involves a heavy edit-compile-debug cycle using a low-level
>    language rather than just interacting with a high-level
>    interpreter.

Neither of these are a significant barrier in general; I expect they
would occupy no more than five minutes of my time.

> *) These particular kinds of changes are useless unles they are
>    accepted into the mainline.   And not just any mainline: a mainline 
>    that is owned by a particular company, with its own particular
>    agenda.

That one *is* significant. I don't bother creating patches like that
if I don't think there's a decent chance of them getting accepted.

> *) These particular kinds of changes are useless to most of even
>    the technical subset of the user community until they appear
>    in a distribution.

That doesn't actually bother _me_, but it is generally true.

> *) Even when they are in a distribution, these particular kinds of 
>    changes are useless unless you upgrade to obtain them, and 
>    even then, since they are intertwingled with other changes, 
>    the choice to upgrade or not is not an easy one.

Variation on the theme, but in general, not a big issue; most people
will upgrade the system they use for sending mail.

> *) Few people have the time or incentive to make this kind of 
>    change.   If you're employed to work on this software, it
>    seems to me unlikely your employer will see a change like this
>    as anything more than a one-pointer for clearing a bug-db 
>    item.   It certainly isn't going to help sell desktops to
>    municipalities or fortune 500 companies, right?   Do you think
>    when you go to a dev-team meeting the manager says "Hey,
>    about this reply-commands foo" or do you think he says "Hey,
>    about the latest release of Microsoft Exchange...."
>    Well, maybe if the dev team gets sufficiently embarassed about
>    it that mgt. has to throw them a bone -- I guess there's something 
>    to that policy of flaming, after all.

True and deciding for some MUAs (but overstated).

However, you have missed the biggest reason: I (we) just don't care
that much about the limitations of somebody else's MUA. [That doesn't
mean I appreciate people trying to break my client in order to work
around a limitation in theirs].

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
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