Re: Is pyzor active?

[John H. <joh...@pl...>]

On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 11:47 -0400, pyz...@nr... wrote:
> Ok for the last 10 people who asked, and the next 10 people who will ask,
> pyzor is not dead. It may simply appear dead because it has worked ok for a
> long time and there have been minimal changes.
> 
Er, are you Frank Tobin, the pyzor maintainer? Your message has no
signature, and email address no real name with it, but you seem to be
stating that pyzor is not dead as a fact.

As one of the 'new people' (see below) it certainly does appear dead,
and I don't think it has been working ok for a while. My first check
when things weren't working, was the mailing lists and bug list.

Users on the mailing list appear to have been having problems with the
server back to July/August last year. So that's almost a year with a
server problem. (Why is there only one server, it would obviously cause
problems if the server failed. I gather from the list that another
server has been offered, although that one too seems to timeout now.)

The software itself is dated from 2002, so no changes since then? There
are bugs listed dating from 2005 back to 2002. There are two patches
listed dating from 2002, and 3 feature requests dating from 2004. Hence,
the 'appearance' is that nothing is happening with the software - no
bugs fixed, no patches applied, and no new release in over 3 years.

>
> We definitely should get those patches onto sourceforge so that new people
> can start using pyzor. I expect many would give up on it before finding the
> patches.
> 
What patches? The Debian ones? Do you already know what these patches
do? If a patch is at least available on SF then we, as users, can apply
it if we wish and hence test it.

> My pyzor reporting thru spamassassin has been broken for a while and my
> recent tests show pyzor timing out quite often. I should get on that.
> 
"Broken for a while" - so it hasn't been working ok then? If the server
times out then we have no chance of seeing if the software works (or
rather if it works well). Definitely needs sorting out.

Don't misunderstand me, I appreciate that these things take a lot of
time to maintain. But the 'impression' is that it isn't being
maintained. Unfortunately I'm more a perl-person, only having looked at
python for a short while, otherwise I may have been able to help out
with the code. However, the server issue can only be resolved by those
in charge of the server.



John.

-- 
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John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK  Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914
E-mail: Joh...@pl...       Fax: +44 (0)1752 233839