You know, Duke Nukem Forever is probably the most well-known vaporware software project out there, but it certainly isn't the only one.

Free/open-source software has a lot of these. As an open-source developer myself, I can understand why. One issue is that a lot of open-source projects are started by young naive people who do not realize how much time and effort it really takes to make a software program. Probably over half of the projects on Sourceforge fall under this category. One example is MooDNS, a DNS server that stopped development around the time the developer realized what a pain in the butt DNS compression is.

Another way open-source projects get abandoned is when other software that does the same thing comes along. For example, the GNU Hurd never became production-ready because Linux came along and was good enough that the perceived need for Hurd development went away.

Other projects that stop development are projects where the developers stop going to school and get real jobs, and no longer have time to devote to an open-source project. One example of this is the Y Window System

For all of the advantages of Free software, one issue is that, without, by and large, the developers being paid money, there is not nearly as much motivation to get something finished, so a lot of projects become vaporware.

Closer to home, I've told myself for years I would have a thread-free version of a recursive resolver for my own MaraDNS. I finally started writing the code in late 2007. Around the end of 2007, I had a working basic non-recursive cache. The project was put on hold in 2008 while I got out of the Slashdot-posting basement and looked for a girlfriend. I finally got one around the end of 2008, and was able to spend 2009 adding a lot of features to the code, making a lot of releases of the code.

Well, around September of 2009, I got burnt out. Too much work for too little (almost no) pay. I stopped doing major development on the recursive code at that point, but have a really nice non-recursive cache with most of the foundation needed to make it a recursive cache. I do want to get back in to the project; but it's a lot of work and having a few thank you emails doesn't feel like enough compensation at times, especially when the other half of the emails are people asking me to implement their favorite pet feature for fun and for free, or asking for free email support. I finally put a plug on that nonsense by making it extremely clear that I only answer private email for people willing to pay me. Here are some of my rants I blogged about. I do get the occasional "you made this nice DNS server, we would like to hire you" email, but haven't gotten a job from that yet.

I do want to finish up the recursive code, and put closure on my DNS server project, but I just haven't gotten myself in the "develop free software" mindset again.

Maybe it's time to stop goofing around on Slashdot and finish up the code. :)

Actually, the issue is that the FSF still hasn't solved the "how can developers eat and pay rent" problem. Free means free (it is, if you will, a subset of "free") and, well, that doesn't pay my bills.

Then again, I have gotten some money for offering "service and support", not nearly enough to pay the rent, but slightly better than nothing. I mainly use a "pay me for support" model to give annoying users "invoice therapy": If you want to be treated like a customer, you must first become a customer by paying me. You would be amazed at the number of idiots out there who think Free means "Implement the features I want or answer my email without getting paid for your time and work".

While I don't use adblock per se, I do use a combination of Firefox's advanced option to disable animated gifs (actually, to have them animate only once) as well as flashblock so I don't have to see animated flash ads.

The reason I do this is because I'm used to reading books; books do not have anything that animates in them, and anything that animates or continuously moves is very distracting for me when I am reading something. I don't mind ads with bright, flashy colors; magazines have had those since the beginning of time [1], but I can't read a page when I see something animated; it's as annoying as having a fly.

As an aside, I remember in the early 2000s when Slashdot was very much against having animated flash ads. Now, they're very common here. I hope, now that the economy is picking up again, that Slashdot will go back to not having animated ads that I have to block. Also, it would be really nice if Adobe gave flash an option where a flash document would never animate until you clicked on it.

[1] The air conditioner was invented so color printing presses used by advertisers would not have the ink run.

My favorite Unix environment for Windows (that, yes, has Bash) is MSYS, which is a lightweight 3 megabyte one-click install of the essentials for a Unix system. No, it doesn't have Perl. Nor Python. But, it does have Awk (via Gawk), which can do the essentials.

Speaking of Civ...what's your favorite Civ variant. Right now, I'm having a lot of fun with the open-source [1] C-evo. It's a tiny Civ clone; the base game is 1.4megs 7zip compressed (without sound). Yes, this game fits on a single floppy. You'll need a second floppy disk to fit the sounds (about 900k). [1] The game is public domain with source code available, but the game is written in the proprietary language Delphi. No, it won't compile in Lazarus without work done on it; we've tried.

For people who like abstract open-source games, Cultivation is a very interesting tiny (400k, 300k 7-zip compressed) game. You need to grow a garden, mate, and have children to win the game.

Does anyone have any information about whether this particular release will become RHEL 6? While I am happy with RHEL (CentOS, actually) 5, it doesn't work with my 2007-era laptop's hardware. The Wiki page claims it does, but the reference backing it up is a 2008 article speculating on RHEL's future.

The problems described in the article: Having it so it's not completely obvious a group is moderated, having a choice of either moderation of every post or no ability to control spammers, flamers, and trolls, and no protection against forged moderation sound like issues caused because Google groups tries too much to be like Usenet.

Usenet was a very good idea in the 1980s and early 1990s, before the internet became anonymous and spammers started moving in. My favorite thing about Usenet is that it's easy to read it offline (Google "Leafnode") for people who do not have a continuous connection to the internet--this was the norm in the UUCP-dominated 1980s, when just about nobody had a direct internet connection.

I recently posted a blog about the death of Usenet:

http://maradns.blogspot.com/2009/07/memories-of-usenet.html

Over at The Chess Variants page, there used to be a rather prolific inventor named Ralph Betza. Not only was he a very strong Chess player (FIDE master), he also invented dozens of chess variants and was the first person to come up with a lot of innovative Chess Variant pieces.

We haven't heard from him in years. We don't know whether he is alive or dead. It would have been nice if there was some way for his family to inform us who only knew him through the internet about his (possible) death.

Also, as the primary maintainer of an open-source project, I have just given my family the email address of my webmaster so that they can let him know just in case I have an untimely death (no, I have no plans to die; I plan on soon getting married to my fiancée and staying married to her for many decades), in addition to a link to Facebook's deceased form.

This way, should the unspeakable happen and I die, people know about it right away and can figure out who will become the maintainer of my open-source project.

Again, not to confuse this discussion with facts, but MySpace 2.0 is quite attractive and has a nice Web 2.0 CSS look to it. The problem is that users have to opt-in to MySpace 2.0, and a lot of users still have pages with a MySpace 1.0 (tables, no CSS, Netscape 4 compatible, dot-com era website design) look to it.

Not to confuse this discussion with facts, but about two years ago MySpace introduced MySpace 2.0, which uses a lot of CSS and allows MySpace pages to be quite attractive. I actually find my MySpace page more attractive than my Facebook page, but I have a thing for earth tones.

Yes, MaraDNS supports IPv6. There are some hoops you need to jump through to do it, but it's there and it works depending on what you use MaraDNS for.

The best place for MaraDNS support is on the MaraDNS mailing list. To join the mailing list, send an email to list-request {at symbol thingy} maradns.org with the word "subscribe" in the subject and body of the message.

If you want to discuss MaraDNS IPv6 support further, or have more questions, please continue this discussion on the mailing list.

This is why MaraDNS (my open-source DNS server) uses a special zone file format.

MaraDNS uses a zone file format that, for the most part, resembles BIND zone files. However, the zone file format has some minor differences so the common "Forgot to put a dot at the end of a hostname" and the "forgot to update the SOA serial number" problems do not happen; a domain name without a dot at the end in a syntax error in MaraDNS' zone file parser; if you want to end a hostname with the name of the zone in question, this has to be explicitly specified with a .% at the end of the hostname.

There is also a mechanism for automatically generating SOA records, or having a SOA record where the serial is automatically updated based on the "last write" timestamp for the zone file.

For people who want to use their BIND zonefiles, there is included a Python script that converts a BIND zonefile in to MaraDNS' similar zone file format.

An interesting point: This research is being done in China, not the United States. Whatever happened to basic research being done in the US? Today's PARC laboratory is not in the US, but appears is in China.

This is not a good thing for people who live in the US. America's increasing dependence on outsourcing is destroying the US' capability to be competitive in today's environment.

The Harvard Business Review has an excellent article about how America is destorying its own future.

The original Usenet posting from 1983 actually wasn't pseudo-poetry; it was prose. The original groups.google.com article has disappeared, but a web version of the article in its original prose is here.