> Yes, please. Unfortunately, I no longer have the free time at
> work I used to have, and don't have time to follow a thread that
> may meander into half a dozen different topics. If one is going
> to thread drift, change the subject line.

... you both are right, and I apologize, normally I pay attention to
this. I'm sorry, I haven't participated in long threads recently.

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from "Carlos Y. Villalpando" <carlos at jpl.nasa.gov=
> -----

> Drat. I missed out on the conversation because I ignored it
> after it turned into an intellectual property rant. Was there a
> specific issue of borgishness brought up?

No, but such a thing is difficult to verify with closed source anyway.

> But basically, I continue to accept P2K because at the
> beginning, he established trust, and even complied with a couple
> of requests to remove features. {...} If I don't find any
> { historical borg hot buttons }, I don't remove his key.
>=20
> I depend on the community to decide amongst itself to say "THIS
> IS BORGISH". I am not the judge of new features, {...}
> If you have a problem, post it here, or on r.g.n. and gain
> support for your position.

a) As above: closed source, can't verify.

b) You say you trust him, therefore the key remains. When you
say it's not up to you, then why does your trust play a role?
And if somebody says "borg", what happens then? How much/ what
kind of support is needed?
(From discussions so far I gathered that there already might be
some features some people consider borg.)

c) There is no definitive "official" standard to compare with.
It's all more or less up to subjective taste and opinion leaders.

When you are not the judge, who _is_ the judge then? If you say
community, who is that? 50% of all players (how many are there,
how to reach all for a poll)? Or just those running the
infra-structure?
Ultimately it's back to you, whatever anybody else might say:
you decide to who you listen. But to _who_ do you listen?
Do others trust him the same way (others might not trust closed
source as much as you do)?

It doesn't help that _some_ oldies complain about some features
while others don't mind those but complain about others, and in
the end there are grudges on several sides.
And then you say "the community has decided", where nobody knows
who or what exactly this is.

We need some "official" standard for Netrek (and Paradise ;) to
definitely decide borgishness, and a _public_ way to verify it.
Can we have _both_?

(And a reliable system to allow servers to allow selected borgish
features, and clients only to work borgish there, and not
anywhere else. I heard FeaturePackets exist for that.)

----- End forwarded message -----

I've realized just these days that the client coders produce the
binaries themselves. This reminds me of too few binaries for
Paradise: long ago I've seen help page examples for "get a client"
where it listed ~20(?) binaries for Paradise alone. I'd like to
have this platform support back, given that all those platforms
still exist. ;)

Therefore I have this suggestion:

I've heard SF has a compile farm, which I believed to be a system
where one could compile on (almost) all platforms to provide
binaries.
If that's true and works easily enough, you could assign some
"trusted" people to take the keys and the source, and then produce
official blessed binaries for all possible platforms.
(unless you, Carlos, want to do it all yourself ;)

This additional instance would provide a) more platform support and
b) some more trust that the binaries are verifyable not to be borg,
i.e. you don't have to trust any coder alone, but they are all
checked by another pair of eyes (source is separated from binary).
How do you like that?

--=20
=A9 Rado S. -- You must provide YOUR effort for your goal!
EVERY effort counts: at least to show your attitude.
You're responsible for ALL you do: you get what you give.