Subj : Re: Irex and Argue
To : Alan Ianson
From : Sean Dennis
Date : Wed May 29 2019 03:44 pm
-=> Alan Ianson wrote to Sean Dennis <=-
AI> Maximus comes to mind too. Thankfully the source for Maximus was
AI> released so anyone interested could move that product forward if they
AI> could/wanted to.
Yes and for that Scott is to be lauded. Max was and is a great BBS software
(I might have some bias in that statement).
AI> Tim did what he did with Telegard freely. He never asked anyone for
AI> anything.
AI> think he did awesome things with Telegard and gave it to anyone who
AI> wanted to use it.
He did give TG a lot of work but there were a lot of things that needed to
be fixed but he refused to fix them. That's why I dropped TG and moved to
Maximus.
AI> Those were not trivial issues to Tim. Telegard was a full system when
AI> Tim started work on it, it was full of code that was not his and he
AI> didn't have the right or permission to release it.
If he'd opened the source, a lot of issues could have been fixed
and code could have been rewritten. It was a single person that was
complaining about copyright and I think that person is no longer alive.
AI> I don't think the source for Internet Rex or Telegard was ever on the
AI> table. It would be nice if it was but not all software is open source.
I agree but it'd be nice if they can fix buggy code. It says something
about one's personal views and standards when they release known buggy code
and then refuse to fix it.
AI> You are in a different boat than I am. I am not a programmer so if I
AI> have a problem with software I can only report it.
I'm not really a programmer when it comes to C. I'm more of a hacker in the
traditional sense.
AI >If the software is
AI> to be upgraded further it needs to be done by the author of the
AI> software whether the source is available or not.
Thank you for agreeing with me. :)
AI> I don't think those who write and support BBS software can ever make
AI> enough $$$ from it to make their living supporting it.
Yes but when you charge people a fee to use your software they expect a
modicum of service to include bugfixing. I don't charge for my software but
I will immediately fix any bugs if they're found.
AI> In every case of active authors of BBS related software today they do
AI> it because they love it. I have and do support authors of shareware and
AI> opensource software.
SD> I have been supporting my own programs for 21 years now without any issue
SD> but it's never been about the money for me.
AI> That is great, it really is. There are few BBS software authors active
AI> today so I encourage you to continue.
I tend to rattle the bushes sometimes and suddenly a BBS software author
shows back up in the scene...
AI> I hold Charles and Tim in high regard and I think both of them did the
AI> best they could.
I did however after private conversations with them, I can't say the same.
AI> Also Scott Dudley. I think he was a master of what he was doing. I've
AI> hoped over the years that he would find free time to continue to update
AI> Maximus and Squish but it never happened.
I do believe Scott works with Rob Swindell as a device driver developer at
Broadcom. I remember Rob saying something about this years (like 20!) ago
but I don't know if it's true anymore.
AI> I don't use IRex anymore but there are two links here who still use it
AI> so I guess it works for them.
MBSE has a special switch in the mail node configuration that will allow me
to force BinkP/1.0 on a node. I do this with Internet Rex and Mystic
systems and it seems to alleviate the issue for me.
One thing that IRex did do quite well was its email server setup for email
packet delivery. I haven't use that for years as I prefer to use FTP if a
node can't use BinkP (though MBSE supports ifcico also).
On a side note, you made me think about working on a few new BBS-related
programs I've been thinking about. I need to install the Linux subsystem in
W10 and install Debian into it. Just finding time to get all of the stuff
done I want...
