Subj : Downlinks and points
To   : Al
From : Oli
Date : Fri Jan 15 2021 07:46 pm

Al wrote (2021-01-15):

 A> It should. It's too bad that FE can't get a small update so it wouldn't
 A> always strip seen bys when tossing to an out of zone link.

 A> Back when FE was last released that is exactly what we wanted/needed but
 A> today it is exactly what we don't want/need. I used FE back then,
 A> wonderful tosser.

Not stripping SEEN-BYs between zones is a dirty hack anyway. If networks are not overlapping and we don't need zone gates, why do we have zones in Fidonet?

 A> FMail is also on my hit list but it doesn't currently include a linux
 A> native setup and I don't think I can run wine on my BBS machine, there is
 A> no xorg installed there.

You don't have to use the config app on the same machine.

 A> Actually hpt is not much harder to setup that squish. I used squish also
 A> years ago. It is a favorite. It's hard to get started but once you get
 A> going it starts to become logical.

I managed to set it up and I recognized the logic. Still, it was much less fun than other software and without previous experience with setting up several tossers I would have been lost.

I started switching back to Squish. The only thing missing is the NNTP server for Squish. SmapiNNTPd is a fork of JamNNTPd, but several commits behind.

 A> I started using husky late in the 90's and was looking for software I
 A> could use on linux and that was a strong point. In those days there was
 A> little support for linux in the world of FTN software. Back then the
 A> husky project was started by a group of people in your part of the world.

I think that was around the time I dropped out of Fidonet. The WorldWideWeb was much more interesting ;).

 Ol>> I stopped considering hpt when I realized that it doesn't even have
 Ol>> basic 5D support and 3D/4D had weird side effects with binkd on my
 Ol>> system (which some experienced too, but many cannot reproduce).

 A> If you haven't already you should bring that up with the husky project.
 A> Software development is never a done deal and we have to keep on it or it
 A> falls into a state of disrepair. Sometimes those discussions are not
 A> quick and easy but we need to have those discussions.

Been there, done that (in other projects). As I don't use hpt and have no intentions to do so in the future, it's just not on top of my priority list.

 Ol>> Then there is the rescan bug for Squish message bases that puts the
 Ol>> wrong time on 50% of the messages (one second off), which can cause
 Ol>> dupes in the network. For a hub this is a really bad bug. It also
 Ol>> created the wrong idea that the Squish format it fundamentally
 Ol>> flawed and that Squish cannot store the original time correctly,
 Ol>> which is not true. That this hasn't been fixed in 20+ years is
 Ol>> astonishing.

 A> I have heard that but it has never been a problem for me, no links here
 A> have ever told me there was an issue. We need to know what the problems
 A> are before we can even hope for a solution, so we need to bring issues up
 A> with the developers and keep talking about it until we get a solution.

I brought it up in the Husky echo. If it hasn't been silently fixed last year, it's still there. The problem is known, if it doesn't get fixed, it doesn't get fixed. I'm not a hpt user.

 Ol>> Is it open source? ...

 A> It's not open source. Not every programmer can work in a group but in the
 A> case of Mystic the author is interested in solving problems. Development
 A> is not always fast but it is ongoing.

Bus factor 1 is still a problem in case of a critical bug that doesn't get fixed, because the developer is unavailable or won't fix the problem for whatever reason.

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