LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@topology.org>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 19:13:50 +0930

Re: Netsaint [was: RE: Text Messaging from Linux]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2001 at 07:04:27PM +0930, Richard Russell wrote:
> > > I am looking to set up a text messaging system on a linux machine so any
> > > failures on other servers can be indicated via text message on a mobile
> > > phone to whoever is on call. Does anyone have any experience of doing
> > > this.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > > If so, how did you go about it. I am interested in any methods that are
> > > available.
> >
> > NetSaint (http://www.netsaint.org/) is an excellent product for Network
> > services monitoring. It even generates graphical maps of your Network
> > devices and their status.
> 
> NetSaint rocks. We use it at work, and have written some plugins for it that
> monitor logs of applications etc...
> 
> However, I am wondering why they are still at 0.0.6 ... to me, the tool
> seems quite mature. We have been using it since 0.0.5 (or earlier), and it
> seems pretty much feature-complete. There have been few (if any) problems
> with it, and as far as we can tell, it's at what we would have thought would
> be 1.0 level. I can't find any reason why it's not at 1.0 on the website,
> and an email to the author remains unanswered... Anyone know why this would
> be the case? I can understand not wanting to release anything until it's
> right (so maybe it should be 0.9 or 0.8 or something -- at _least_ 0.1), but
> I feel bad(ish) using software at 0.0.6 in a production environment...
> 
> Can anyone shed any light?


Richard,

What perplexes me is that people think that these numbers have
some standardised meaning.
The fact that some people follow some conventions does not
mean that everyone has to do so.
So as far as I'm concerned, these numbers are all
completely arbitrary numbers.
With the linux kernel, of course, there isn't even a
simple increasing-with-time rule for the version numbers.


Given that there are some expections from some people about
the significance of the version numbers, maybe the authors
of the software are just being humble - or trying to avoid
being sued by anyone who expects the software to be fully
functional and finds a bug or something.

A slashdot thread a while back (a Q&A session by a lawyer)
said that even if the software is free and GPL and
covered from head to toe with disclaimers, this still
does not protect the author against a lawsuit for
damaged data. So maybe they're just trying to make sure
that no one thinks of having a go at them for any faults.

Personally, I start generally at 0.1.0, and rarely
get to 0.2.0. And that's because I don't want people
bugging me for why various features aren't there etc.
It's amazing how many people think that if the software
is free then you have to give free unlimited support.
So when people ask me hard questions, I jsut say
"This software is garbage. It's just toy software.
Please don't use it. I recommend package XYZ.
Go bug them instead, matey."
Or politer words to that effect...

If there _is_ a set of standard meanings for the version
numbers somewhere, could you post a URL here?
It would be nice to know what I'm not adhering to.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

-- 
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