Anybody still using XRN and want to see it in Debian?

[Jonathan Kamens]

Hi all,

I'm the maintainer of XRN, an old-school UNIX GUI News
reader. It's definitely showing its age, but it's still
perfectly useable if you don't need your News reader to
hnadle MIME or multipart messages. It's got some pretty
advanced KILL-file functionality, it's wicked fast, and it
uses a ridiculously small amount of memory compared to modern
applications, which makes sense considering that it's nearly
50 years old (I'm posting this message using XRN, and it's
taking up less than 7MB of RAM, compare to over 1GB for my
running Thunderbird!).

Anyway, I recently decided it was about time for me to learn
how to package software for Debian, and I decided to use the
XRN source code as the sample upstream application to practice
on, so now I've got a Debian XRN package pretty much ready to
go. I'm wondering if I should try to find someone to sponsor
the package to get it added to Debian, but that's going to be
impossible unless I can prove there's sufficient interest to
justify it.

So, the question is, are you still using XRN, and if there
were a package for it in Debian and the Linux distributions
built on top of Debian, would you use it? If so, please email
me and let me know. Or you can post here if you don't want to
email for whatever reason.

Similarly, if you have any suggestions for where else I should
look to try to find other XRN users who might use a Debian
package, please let me know that as well.

Thanks!

[Marco Moock]

Am 24.09.2023 um 00:59:23 Uhr schrieb Jonathan Kamens:

> So, the question is, are you still using XRN, and if there
> were a package for it in Debian and the Linux distributions
> built on top of Debian, would you use it? If so, please email
> me and let me know. Or you can post here if you don't want to
> email for whatever reason.
>
> Similarly, if you have any suggestions for where else I should
> look to try to find other XRN users who might use a Debian
> package, please let me know that as well.

I have never heard of it.

Is it hard to create Debian packages for it?
If not: Why not simply creating and uploading them?

That enables easy usage for many users because other distributions take
the packages from Debian.

[candycanearter07]

Is it up somewhere right now? If so, I'll take a look at it. Sounds
intriguing.
--
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

[Marco Moock]

Am 24.09.2023 um 01:56:22 Uhr schrieb candycanearter07:

> Is it up somewhere right now?

Please explain what that means.

> If so, I'll take a look at it. Sounds intriguing.

Ubuntu and Linux Mint take most of their packages from Debian, so they
will also include them.

[Michael Uplawski]

Good morning

Jonathan Kamens hat geschrieben:

> I'm wondering if I should try to find someone to sponsor
> the package to get it added to Debian, but that's going to be
> impossible unless I can prove there's sufficient interest to
> justify it.

Will you continue to *maintain* the software and, as comparisons are
inevitable, to add functionality that some (a few or many) users will ask for?

I would not advocate adding to Debian what would be basically a dead project
from the start.

In short: What are the perspectives for XRN ? Do you seek the collaboration of
others in the development?

Cheerio

Michael
--
Es ist an der Zeit

[William Unruh]

On 2023-09-24, Marco Moock <mm+use...@dorfdsl.de> wrote:
> Am 24.09.2023 um 01:56:22 Uhr schrieb candycanearter07:
>
>> Is it up somewhere right now?
>
> Please explain what that means.

Up somewhere= available for download somewhere.

[Spiros Bousbouras]

On Sun, 24 Sep 2023 01:56:22 -0500
candycanearter07 <n...@thanks.net> wrote:
> On 9/24/23 01:06, Marco Moock wrote:
> > Am 24.09.2023 um 00:59:23 Uhr schrieb Jonathan Kamens:
> >
> >> So, the question is, are you still using XRN, and if there
> >> were a package for it in Debian and the Linux distributions
> >> built on top of Debian, would you use it? If so, please email
> >> me and let me know. Or you can post here if you don't want to
> >> email for whatever reason.

There was a package for Etch Debian but not Lenny Debian (and
presumably not the Debian releases after Lenny). Do you (Jonathan)
know what happened ?

> Is it up somewhere right now? If so, I'll take a look at it. Sounds
> intriguing.

http://www.mit.edu/people/jik/software/xrn.html

[J.B. Nicholson]

Jonathan Kamens <j...@kamens.us> wrote:
> So, the question is, are you still using XRN, and if there
> were a package for it in Debian and the Linux distributions
> built on top of Debian, would you use it? If so, please email
> me and let me know. Or you can post here if you don't want to
> email for whatever reason.

If the license were a free software license (see
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html for a list of such
licenses and comments about each license), I'd take a look at XRN.

But from what I can see in XRN's COPYRIGHT file, this part:
> Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and
> its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted
> [...]

makes me think that this license does not qualify as a free software
license.

Am I correct to understand that one may only distribute XRN
without charging a fee?

If so, would you consider switching the license to a free software
license?