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[Richard Gaskin]

Ray G. Miller wrote:

> Richard, you have my vote. Is your title "Chief Poohbah" or simply
> "Hw-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed" ?

I prefer Poohbah.

At the moment it seems no one else has an interest in herding cats 'cept
Xavier and myself, so how about Xavier as my running mate in a single-party
election?  Stranger things have happened, and we won't have to spend time
counting dangling chads.  ;)

Here's my official candidacy statement:

If elected as MetaCard IDE PoohBah for the next six-month term, I will hold
true to the principles of the Lazy Programmers Party.  Traditional Party
values rest firmly on the sofa, next to a bowl of chips and a pint of
Guiness, with a strident interest in making as few changes to the MC IDE as
possible.

Under my Poohbahship, changes would fall into three categories, in order of
priority:

1. Those needed for compatibility with ongoing ehnancements to the engine

2. A small handful of convenient extras like the Message Box placement which
are easy to do

3. More complex changes like adding support to open the Transcript
Dictionary, a modest Rev-like plugin architecture, and maybe others

All changes would be proposed here and voted on before implementation, with
test versions available at SourceForge along with the most recent release
version.

I'm of the opinion that a plugin architecture serves as a nice substitute
for making too many changes to the IDE itself, as most of us have our own
favorite tools and we could trade them freely without interfering with
anyone else's preferences.  Those who'd like to use Xavier's script editor
or my utility palettes could do so, and those who want me to keep my junk
the heck out of their way would be free to do so.

Above all else, I feel the greatest value in the MC IDE is its simplicity,
and hold that paramount above all other considerations.

My candidacy rests on a platform of openness, democratic process, and
guacamole to go with the chips.

If Xavier's on board with this I know there will be many tasks that could
use two sets of hands, and speaking for myself if anyone becomes unhappy
with anything I do I would politely submit to an impeachment.


If that's all good I have one modest status update:

In an email with Scott he has chosen an open source license:  GPL.  While
its requirement that all source be open might make it problematic for some
projects, since the MC IDE has always been openly readable it's not a
problem here.  It lets MetaCard Corp retain ownership of the copyright and
requires that any derivative works are also GPLed.

More as I hear back from him on some GPL particulars (changes to the About
box and licensing info details)....

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any Web site
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