[Spread-users] Spread Concepts communication and source code.

[Jim Kleckner]

My apologies for appearing to fire and disappear.

My notebook computer welcomed me last Tuesday morning with a
"disk error" that caused the Windoze "rescue disk" to freeze
even though a Linux live-DVD could read it fine.  That, coupled
with having to deal with an illness in the family, kept me from
getting back on line until late Friday.  I am just digging out
of the accumulated computer equivalent of a snow drift.

I have gotten very good private responses to my questions and I
don't question the viability Spread Concepts which is busy with
their contracts.

I would like to encourage JHU and Spread Concepts to make the
core toolkit repository publicly visible as read-only and have
offered to help with that.  It is the only good solution, as
pointed out by others.

Regarding the point-to-point optimizations, I would like to
encourage anyone with any quantity of dollars to direct toward
this to contact me .  Your investment would go directly towards
improving our common platform.


Jonathan Stanton wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I guess the short answer is... No. The project isn't dead. 
>
> There have been a few communication problems with regards to svn
> accounts that I'm responsible for. For that I apologize, and I've
> created the accounts I have records of requests for. If you would like
> one and have not received it, email me directly
> (jonathan at spreadconcepts.com) with your SSH public key and I'll set them
> up now. The policy for SVN accounts has always been that anyone can have
> one and that continues to be the case. 
>
> The Spread toolkit has reached a state of active maturity. The
> discussions on the mailing list are often between users of Spread, with
> members of Spread Concepts answering technical questions and
> participating when appropriate. We also have had a number of direct and
> active collaborations with outside users of Spread to customize it or
> discuss how to use it most effectively and we continue to be interested
> in working with others on improvements to Spread.  For example, in the
> last few months John Schultz answered a number of questions on the list.
>
> The source of Spread is available from Spread.org and any patch or
> suggestion is always examined and looked at to see if it would benefit
> the Spread code base prior to any full Spread version release. We also
> provide SVN access - which except for the issues with creating new
> accounts has been working continuously for years.
>
> As to a location to host 'unofficial' Spread materials, in the past one
> of the following methods handled that need:
>
> 1) Patch or suggestion was merged with the official docs or code;
>
> 2) We hosted the patches for the authors separately if they were not merged;
>
> 3) We host (and there are 3rd party archives) a web archive of the
> mailing list with links to some of the most useful posts.
>
> 4) Someone created their own webpage or site for their patch or add-on
> and sent us a link which we then added to the Spread Applications or
> Documentation and Resources pages on the website. 
>
> It's certainly possible that some other way of handling this could be
> useful and we'd be happy to discuss it. 
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jonathan
>
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 07:28:58AM -0800, Dave Parker wrote:
>   
>> +1
>>
>> Aside from discussion in this forum, the project appears to be quite dead.
>>
>> According to http://www.spreadconcepts.com/News.html Spread Concepts has
>> gotten involved in a project with Boeing and the U.S. army.  That may
>> explain the silence. But it sure would be nice to have some kind of
>> update that puts the future of this project and its licensing in some
>> perspective.
>>
>> Jim Kleckner wrote:
>>     
>>> I've tried a couple of times since 2005 to request read-only access
>>> to the spread repository and never gotten any kind of reply.
>>>
>>> Similarly, all enquiries to this list that address Spread Concepts
>>> go unanswered.
>>>
>>> Does anyone get any response?
>>>
>>> There have been a number of patches on the list and no way
>>> to see if they have made it in or get them from the repository.
>>>
>>> I'm considering putting a copy of spread into code.google.com
>>> just so we have something.
>>>
>>> Comments on how good/bad this idea is?
>>>
>>>       
>