Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Maintainership, and whiners...

[James Blackwell]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2005 at 09:23:54PM +0200, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    > Blech, all this "Tom sucks as a maintainer" crap irks me quite
>    > badly.  If people think he did such a bad job, why can't someone
>    > step up as a maintainer and try doing a better job?  Seriously, I
>    > dare you all.
> 
>    Well, Walter tried in the past and ArX is the result.
> 
> AFAIK, Tom was already maintaining larch/arch/tla/whatever at that
> time.  And ArX was simply a silly fork because of differing opinions
> about various stuff.  So I can't say that this was tried by Walter, if
> anything, it was James Blackwell who tried it in the past.  But the
> past isn't relevant here, so lets look into the future.

I'll welcome any corrections, but my understanding is that something along
the following lines happened: 

1. Tom wrote larch in bash
2. Tom ceased work and demanded payment
3. After about a year Landry picked up the torch and started maintaing
   larch. Tom was initially pleased.
4. Tom became unpleased and there was a fallout between Tom and Landry.
5. Tom took larch back over, Landry forked off ArX.
6. Tom rewrote larch in C and dubbed it first arch, then gnuarch.
   Landry rewrote larch in C++ and dubbed it ArX.

I have no idea how ArX is doing these days. I've spoken with Landry over
several occasions in the past. He seems like a pretty nice sort to me and
I happen to like him.