Re: [hylafax-users] new community site

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

> But seriously, Lee has a point, "hylafax.org" is not quite so "org-ish"
> as lots of other orgs like apache or fsf.  The whois record is perfectly
> clear about who hylafax.org "is".  And for lots of folks, that in itself
> would be reason enough to look for a more public-domain place to
> congregate, regardless of how many sponsored links the current domain puts
> or doesn't put on the site, the rpms, mailing list footer, etc.

The domain name registry is a consequence of my having founded hylafax.org
as a private individual, for the benefit of the community, years ago when I
saw HylaFAX development stagnating and wanted to 'open it up'. I'd be more
than happy to consider how better to do this, but the only option that has
seemed to make sense is a big formal non-profit, or foundation, and that has
seemed like a large solution to a non-problem, as long as hylafax.org was
run responsibly, with community oversight. As I mentioned previously, any
major changes have been discussed in the developer forum and the community
concensus has ruled. Not everyone has agreed with the concensus decisions,
but neither myself nor iFAX has ever gone against the wishes of the majority
of developers as expressed in those discussions.

The only thing I haven't been happy with thus far is the lack of updates to
the site. The main barrier has been the structure of the old site (which was
adapted from Sam's original one that used to run on Paul Vixie's
www.vix.com). We've been planning a major revamp for awhile now that will
help us with that in terms of content management technology and other
technological enablers to allow others to add content (wiki-type stuff), and
we have talented people to throw at the project now, so it's an exciting
time.

> (By the way, having only one person in charge of the sourceforge project
> could be just as worrisome.) Personally I find the links a bit annoying
> but quite tolerable in the sense that I don't have the motivation to
> change it so I tolerate it because it gets me to the great software and
> "lustrous" community.  Lee apparently sees it as a bit more extreme,
> enough to motivate him to act on it, so I commend him for doing that.

Again though, there's as many ads or more ... the ads are just different
(ie: they're not often relevant to HylaFAX). Are irrelevant ads somehow
better?

> Again, his actions give me some good things to ponder... If hylafax.org is
> a community, who decided that ifax.com is the "commercial sponsor" as is
> mentioned several places on the web site, and could we un-decide that?

Great question, and I welcome this discussion. As usual, things like this
tend to evolve over time. As a private citizen, I was the principal sponsor
by virtue of having founded the site originally, and having sourced most of
the equipment (except that hard drive!). Robert C and Phil W helped greatly
during that time, but their participation waned over time so it was mostly
just me and contributors (they're still here though!). When I got involved
in iFAX, my commitment level (and theirs) increased because there were many
more resources (financial and technical) available. It is the way it is
quite simply because nobody else was rushing to do it, and I got in at the
ground level and gave big-time from day 1. The level of commitment I have
shown since 97 or so and that iFAX has shown in the past few years since its
inception I think (and hope) warrants the monniker as a commercial sponsor.

> If "the community" (hypothetically) incorporated itself as a legal
> association or non-profit organization, would the current registrant turn
> over the hylafax.org domain to that new entity?

This would have to be handled very delicately and the community of
developers would have to have the utmost confidence of the new entity's
complete transparency and democratic principles, but I don't see why that
could not happen. To be frank, the main barrier to that is the admin ...
it's admin intensive to manage a non-profit/foundation properly, and it
hasn't seemed to be a problem to anyone up to now. The management of
hylafax.org has been democratic, and transparent. Any new structure would
need to be equally so.

> I don't see the starting of a sourceforge project as "irresponsible" or
> that anyone should have been "consulted", that's the beauty of it, if you
> see something you don't like, you can change it instead of just griping.
> It is not the end of the world, projects fork all the time.  Sure it may
> lead to some confusion for a while, but it might also foster some
> improvements.

If it's a code fork (or website fork) that represents itself as such, I
would agree. But the release notes for 4.2.2.1 are written in exactly the
same style as the hylafax.org ones, and represents that the hylafax
development team has released it. It represents that it is being done by the
same group of people who have lovingly and carefully released versions of
HylaFAX on hylafax.org through a structured, democratic concensus-driven
process. As a long-standing hylafax developer, I object to the release being
done in the name of our group without consultation. I'm all for
hylafax-lh-4.2.2.1 or something like that, but to call it hylafax, and to
release it on behalf of the "hylafax developers", I think the current
developers should have been consulted. If not, then why not create a new
website with different colors, call it hylafax-ng or something like that,
and avoid the confusion?

-Darren


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