Survey results

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hello, all!

Thanks to everybody who participated in the survey.  The results so far
are sufficient to make decisions.  They are still statistically
insignificant, because the subscribers of the mailing lists represent
power users, who are more likely to use some obscure features.

In short, let's stop now, since more replies won't change anything.

The results:

mcserv                   2
background operations    8
directory tree           5
native Windows port      4

The results were surprising for me, especially the popularity of the
background operations, given the fact that the code has been seriously
broken for years, and nobody has reported it.

The directory tree fared worse, but it may be more popular among
non-subscribers, since it bears some similarity to GUI file managers.

The same applied to the native Windows support.  Since the current version 
doesn't compile for Windows (except Cygwin), it's natural to expect low 
interest from the users of the port to the current development.

So, the Windows port stays in the tree, but perhaps we should drop support
to all compilers but one.  I mean MinGW - it's free, it's maintained, it
comes with Cygwin.  Also I would like to use "configure" rather than rely 
on the distributed pc/config.h.

The only "tough call" is mcserv.  It got just 2 votes despite being rather
bug-free (although slow) and despite being distributed as a separate
package by many Linux distributions (even by the brand-new Mandrake 9.0),
whcih could give it some "legitimacy".

I wonder how many users mcserv would have, if it was made clear that the
protocol is non-standard, unoptimized, and that the password is
transmitted unencrypted over the net.

I think that mcserv should be spun off as a separate project.  It is good
for development of embedded systems, when the memory size is an issue, and
the security is not.  mcserv can be made very portable, more portable than
mc itself (think MS DOS, VxWorks, Netware etc).  As for mcfs, it should
stay in the code, disabled by default.

Thanks to everybody for participation.  When replying, please reply to 
only one of the mailing lists, and consider changing the subject if your 
reply is concerned with just one of the questions of the survey.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin