On Tuesday, August 5, 2003, at 05:17 AM, Nicholas Clark wrote:
If there are no bugs, there is no need for bug fixes. MJD gets very irritated with people asking whether certain of his modules are abandoned, simply because the most recent version is old.
Why are you assuming that all stable code has known but unfixed bugs? If anything, have rt.perl.org send out ping messages about new (but unresponded to) bugs, or maybe open but serious bugs, because these do have content
I agree. There are plenty of modules on CPAN that people still find useful even though they haven't had recent development on them. It's much better to inform people of known/serious bugs in modules, than to try to guess at the author's intentions WRT the module.
Give people the real information, and they will be able to make their own judgments about a module's fitness for their purpose.
I've gotten emails out of the blue about some of my modules I'd assumed were long ago forgotten, but apparently they scratched some unexpected itch for somebody at the right time.
I believe our challenge is not to enforce some kind of standards on CPAN, but to make sure that people can efficiently find the most appropriate tools for their needs. I think the search.cpan.org redesign was really a *huge* leap forward for that, and I'd like to see similar efforts continue in that direction.
-Ken
