Re: suggestions for project list - crickrock

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson <mailbox@gunnar.cc>]

Brock,
Thanks for your appreciatory words. However, as regards your
suggestions, I have to disappoint you.
A few words about my view on Ringlink: Originally I wrote it in order to
be able to run my own ring (yes, one single ring) without being
dependent on WebRing or any other ring service. (Actually I haven't
moved my own ring from WR yet.) But I decided that it was a good
opportunity to make a contribution to the ring community, so I adopted
the design accordingly, created the Ringlink homepage, and made it open
source.
These are the fields of applications that I have had in mind:
1) Install the program on your own server or webhosting account, and
   run one or a few own rings.
2) Install the program on your own server or webhosting account, and
   provide a small-scale ring service, offering a few other
   ringmasters to run their rings at your Ringlink installation.
> Most of my suggestions have to do with master admin of the ring
> system, rather than admin of individual rings.
And that's the principal problem... So far, the Ringlink project doesn't
aim to provide the software to run a large webring hosting service. I'm
not saying that Ringlink cannot be the base for such a service, but if
you plan to expand CrickRock to the extent you indicate in your posting,
you simply cannot rely on me. In the future I might implement some of
the features you ask for, but I wouldn't count on it, and I will give
them low priority.
If you do extensive modifications of Ringlink, in line with your
suggestions, you might want to have them implemented in the original
software. I'd appreciate such suggestions, and if I find the
modifications good enough and not contradictory to the idea with
Ringlink, I will be happy to add them to the original program. Please
note that irrespective of your decision in this respect, according to
the GNU General Public License the source code of such extensive
modifications must be made publicly available on the same conditions as
the Ringlink program.
Besides the general comments above, I'd like to also comment on your
suggestion for an "Inactive Sites Auto-Expire Feature". The design of
Ringlink presupposes personal involvement of the ringmaster, and I
haven't even considered to build in any auto-expire feature. (There are
other who have chosen a high degree of automation.) Yes, some new sites
never put up the prescribed HTML code, but in my opinion, ringmasters
who find manual deletion of such sites to be too much work should
probably not be ringmasters.
So I'm afraid, Brock, that my priorities as regards Ringlink, and the
development of the program as can be expected out from those priorities,
differ from your priorities and the development you would like to see.
Regards,
Gunnar