Re: [hylafax-users] new community site

["Darren Nickerson" <darren.nickerson@xxxxxxxx>]

> Why have I set up the Sourceforge HylaFAX site?
>
> Truthfully, it's an act of mercy.  The hylafax.org domain registrant is 
> desireous, as you may well be able to tell, to use the domain for 
> commercial purposes.  This is the registrant's right.  The recent 
> announcement of a sponsored site reworking will likely only result in 
> further commercialization.

First of all, for the record, the reworking of the site was primarily 
intented to make it easier, through the use of a wonderful content 
management system (either Mambo or Joomla), for a larger number of people to 
maintain the hylafax.org site. The current site is a bear to update, and it 
makes it hard for contributors to add changes without going through a 
webmaster. We've always been open to adding contributions to the website - 
your How-To section is a fine example of how someone can add to the 
hylafax.org site freely ... it has just been very hard to do to date and 
required someone to be very determined to make it work. The focus was going 
to be on opening up the new site even more, not closing it down. We are very 
interested in moving away from the Ivory Tower of website development, just 
as I personally helped move HylaFAX development in that direction so many 
years ago.

So you mostly object to the advertising you say? Comparing

    https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=148904

with

    http://bugs.hylafax.org/bugzilla/

One of them has a lot less advertising and it ain't sourceforge! ;-)

I personally, and more recently iFAX, have a long tradition of consulting 
the community before, during, and after any changes to hylafax.org and 
_really_ listening to what everyone had to say. Our recent announcement 
soliciting comments/input/feedback from the community as we build a bigger, 
better hylafax.org is further evidence of that. If anyone has specific 
objections to the present site, we would be happy to discuss them, and 
change/adapt the site to suite the concensus that might emerge. Of course 
please don't ask us to recode it in PHP overnight! ;-)

Since I'm sure you'll want to be at least equally open and democratic with 
your new site, I have a few concerns that perhaps you might want to address. 
In the release announcement at http://hylafax.sourceforge.net/4.2.2.1.php, 
you say:

"The HylaFAX development team is pleased to announce our 4.2.2.1 patch level 
subrelease!" Can you revise that to something like "The Sourceforge HylaFAX 
development team is pleased to announce our 4.2.2.1 patch level 
subrelease!". Or perhaps "I, Lee Howard, am pleased to announce"? I mean, 
this is your release not ours after all. If you really do represent the 
entire hylafax development community, than that's fine ... but I think since 
that community has traditionally lived at hylafax.org there would need to be 
a vote or something before you could officially and democratically represent 
it. It just seems dishonest to me.

Also,  under the * KNOWN ISSUES * section, you ask people to refer to the 
Sourceforge bug tracker for a list of known issues. Are you actually forking 
the bug tracking database? I think it's important to clarify, so that people 
know where to file their bugs.

Also, you seem to be opposed to anyone making money from the HylaFAX name or 
domain name, and yet at the bottom of your front page, you seem to be 
collecting donations!!! We've thought about this often on HylaFAX.org, and 
always concluded that there would be no fair and equitable way to distribute 
any donations that might come in, so it was best not to offer that. As a 
result, the only donation we have ever accepted has been a hard drive 
(thanks Phil!) that is still the main drive for one of the primary 
hylafax.org computers. Will you be sending payments to people when they 
submit bug reports then?

Actually, we _did_ once look into accepting donations. We figured we would 
need to form an official non-profit corporate entity whose board of 
directors (or steering committee) consisted of people elected from the 
HylaFAX community, and who would ABSOLUTELY publish annual financial 
statements for the sake of transparency. Perhaps this is what you have done?

-Darren


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