bogus bogotuning

[David Relson]

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 11:27:13 -0500
Greg Louis wrote:

> On 20040129 (Thu) at 1058:22 -0500, Jason A. Smith wrote:
>  
> > I ask again, if I make a patch is there any chance at all that it
> > might be included?  Or does everyone here agree with some people
> > that say all of your users are stupid idiots who will ignore all
> > instructions and warnings?
> 
> I doubt anyone on this list says that, but it makes a convenient straw
> man for the impassioned rhetoric you apparently like to substitute for
> rational argument.
> 
> Nobody who has built much software is unaware that some quite smart
> people occasionally make stupid errors and ignore instructions and
> warnings.  Programs for unknown users ought to be built as safely as
> is consistent with _useful_ flexibility and functionality.  Hell,
> programs I build for _myself_ are made that way, or at least I try to
> meet that goal.  That's why I put those limits in in the first place.
> 
> David, as lead developer, could you put Jason at rest about whether a
> patch from him to restore something like the -F option has any chance
> at all of inclusion?  Two people have already told him that if he
> builds it and publishes it and enough people like it and advocate it,
> we will probably listen.  He doesn't seem to want to believe them. 

Greg and Jason,

My initial take on Jason's request was that he, personally, wanted to
run bogotune with his small message corpus.  My first reaction was to
re-instate the "-F" (force) option.  However, after re-reading his
message, it seemed more like a "what would happen if ..." query than a
feature request.  I responded with that in mind.

Most of yesterday's messages seemed to be that "the developers should do
whatever is requested".  The open source mantras that I subscribe to are
"if it itches, scratch it" and "if it's interesting, do it."  For me,
adding "-F" is neither of those.  Had a patch been offered, it would
have been considered.  However yesterday's messages didn't go in that
direction.

After reading Clint's comment, it appears that there are others who want
the opportunity to see what happens with a small message set.  I'll
consider adding the new option to bogofilter if someone will supply a
patch and if the patch includes the before _and_ after warnings agreed
on my Greg and Clint.

Jason - I believe the ball is in your court now.

Sincerely,

David