Re: [was: Wherefore the 1.0 release?] What's wrong with CPAN

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From: Tony Bowden
Subject: Re: [was: Wherefore the 1.0 release?] What's wrong with CPAN
Date: 15:15 on 18 Jul 2005
On Mon, Jul 18, 2005 at 08:55:25AM -0500, Jay Strauss wrote:
> Ok, I'll bite.  Why, in your opinion,  are some high profile CPAN 
> developers becoming unhappy with CPAN?

I don't really want to speak for others here, but one significant reason
is way they are treated as a result of being a module author. 

> My only knock is its seems like too many files seem to be unmaintained 
> (un-updated)

Why is this a problem? 

I'm not being deliberately obtuse on this one. I've heard a lot of
people recently complaining about things not being maintained, and don't
understand it. 

Aside from the earlier comment about a module possible being "complete",
and not needing anything new done, there are also a lot of people
releasing code to CPAN just in case other people might find it useful.
They're certainly not signing up to become an unpaid slave to the entire
Perl community just by releasing their code.

As part of $job I've recently had to write code to convert Kwiki format
pages to Media Wiki format. In the past I would have bundled that up and
released it to CPAN knowing that someone else will almost certainly
find it useful. 

But these days I rarely bother doing that any more. The code I wrote
only needed to cope with enough of the Kwiki formatting rules for what
was actually used on the wiki in question. It's not going to be a simple
'download and use' solution for everyone else.

My experience of CPAN a couple of years ago was such that I would still
have released it, and over the next few months probably got a few messages
from people thanking me for the module, and maybe supplying patches to
enable it to handle a few other formatting rules. 

Now I'd much more expect people to raise the absence of those formatting
rules as bugs, and then moan and gripe if I didn't release a new version
with those things fixed within a few days.  (And that's leaving aside
the people who would express dismay that I'm helping people to move from
a Perl-based wiki to a PHP-based wiki, and that I'm obviously a traitor
to The Cause(tm), or something)

And yes, I could probably dream up a wonderfully architected abstract
Wiki Conversion suite of modules that allows users to add all their
own rules without having to get their hands dirty with the innards,
and maybe even package those up and release them themselves. But really,
this was only meant to be a couple of hours of work, and I'm quite happy
with The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work.

I'm done with the code I've written. I'm not wanting to forever be the
person who maintains Wiki to Wiki conversion tools. So now I'll just
dispose of the code and it'll die. No-one else will get the benefit from
it, even just as a starting point for their own code. I just don't have
the energy to do otherwise.

And yes, I see this as a sad thing.

But there seem to be just too many users these days who don't see CPAN
(and CPAN authors) so much as a useful resource that can helpful to
them doing a job, so much as something that they expect to do their job
for them.

And I, for one, am not going to be their dancing monkey boy.

Tony

(message missing)

Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Matt S Trout 15:24 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 15:33 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Matt S Trout 15:57 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 15:57 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Dan Sully 16:06 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 16:34 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
William Ross 16:59 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Matt S Trout 16:23 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 16:29 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Stephen Quinney 08:43 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 09:14 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Brett Sanger 13:13 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
merlyn (Randal L. Schwartz) 13:27 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 16:03 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Brett Sanger 16:11 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 16:41 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Brett Sanger 17:39 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 18:05 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Brett Sanger 18:13 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Christopher Hicks 19:12 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Casey West 18:20 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Simon Wilcox 16:23 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 16:57 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Simon Wilcox 17:11 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 17:34 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Simon Wilcox 17:51 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ask_Bj=F8rn_Hansen?= 20:23 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Brett Sanger 17:54 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Bryan Allen 18:20 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 18:55 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Casey West 19:05 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Cees Hek 19:17 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Bogart Salzberg 20:37 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Sam Vilain 06:05 on 19 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
leif.eriksen 06:22 on 19 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 08:10 on 19 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Casey West 13:40 on 19 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 14:47 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Brett Sanger 15:00 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 17:10 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Gordon Haverland 15:59 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 16:27 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tyler Rorabaugh 16:33 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Simon Wilcox 16:35 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 16:48 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
hartzell 20:52 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 21:05 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Aaron Trevena 18:44 on 19 Jul 2005

Re: [was: Wherefore the 1.0 release?] What's wrong with CPAN
Tony Bowden 15:15 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 10:20 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Edward J. Sabol 19:15 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 19:21 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Edward J. Sabol 19:31 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Matt S Trout 19:32 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Dana Hudes 02:33 on 19 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Matt S Trout 02:54 on 19 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Rick Measham 21:27 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Michael G Schwern 21:34 on 17 Jul 2005

RE: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Andrew O'Brien 00:26 on 19 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 00:34 on 19 Jul 2005

RE: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Simon Wilcox 08:03 on 19 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Mike Whitaker 08:05 on 19 Jul 2005

RE: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Andrew O'Brien 01:04 on 19 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Matt S Trout 17:06 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 17:07 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Dana Hudes 17:24 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Mike Whitaker 18:18 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Sebastian Riedel 18:40 on 17 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
leif.eriksen 03:01 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ask_Bj=F8rn_Hansen?= 07:35 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Matt S Trout 13:52 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 14:55 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Michael Peters 14:56 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 15:16 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 18:16 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 18:36 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Mike Whitaker 18:39 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 18:47 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Michael Peters 19:30 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 19:44 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ask_Bj=F8rn_Hansen?= 20:32 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 20:41 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 18:45 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Scott McWhirter 19:19 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 19:29 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Rick Measham 00:23 on 19 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Bryan Allen 19:24 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 19:24 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Matt S Trout 19:38 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 19:39 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
hartzell 20:53 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
merlyn (Randal L. Schwartz) 21:35 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 21:50 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 19:35 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Matt S Trout 19:58 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 19:56 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Rhesa Rozendaal 20:34 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 23:01 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
David Baird 00:31 on 19 Jul 2005


Peter Speltz 05:54 on 20 Jul 2005

Re: your mail
Tony Bowden 07:19 on 20 Jul 2005

Re: Wherefore the 1.0 release?
Tony Bowden 19:43 on 18 Jul 2005

Re: your mail
Peter Speltz 16:12 on 20 Jul 2005

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