Re: Determining whether gnunet is connected

[Fungilife can be eternal]

> > On 1. Mar 2022, at 17:17, Bob Ham rah@settrans.net wrote:
> > On 01/03/2022 12:41, Schanzenbach, Martin wrote:
> Why you are writing this in such an aggressive tone?

Obviously, there hasn't been any other way to convey the message.
Should I go back to archives looking for my own messages over the past
years saying about the same thing with a milder tone and receiving 0
acknowledgment for my "unsubstantiated" criticism?

Did anything change?

> This is not constructive help at all. We know that the system is not
> in a good state at this time. Nobody is claiming otherwise.

Where does it say on the front page, or on the packages thrown out in
Arch's AUR and elsewhere, "alpha project not fully functional"??
"we know ..."  ..."Nobody is claiming otherwise"  you may know, someone
in authority of the gnunet site should also tell the world.

> This project is over 10 years old. A lot of stuff has accumulated.
> Entropy is a bitch.

How often have seen fully developed fully functional, bug free software,
receive little attention due to lack of documentation and die of
neglect?  On the other hand hot-air can draw enough attention that
eventually becomes substance due to the enormous interest in the bubble.

I may not know much, and you may be overly defensive of your baby,
but you are doing a disservice to the software itself.

> Have you actually tried downloading and running it?
> There are packages as well for some distributions to try.
> So yes, you can download and try it. How would people build newer applications
> (such as reclaimID or messenger) if it would not work at all?

When I had it running years ago, and saw actual "peers" connected,
I had no idea what I did right, and since then I've never managed to
replicate the success.

> What were the problems you encountered? Which application did not work?
> Did you open a bug? Was there already a bug reported?
> Where was the documentation wrong?

First something has to work, then you realize what it does when it is working,
then identify what all of a sudden doesn't work, then report a bug.

Obviously this chain logic escapes the author of documentation as well.

> How would you improve it?

THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY good documentation can be written.
First you need to identify some with good writing ability (tech writing).
Then you teach them and coach them how the software works and what
needs to be done to get it working.  Once "they" realize how it works
they can write proper documentation.
Unfortunately the best engineers have never been able to communicate
directly with the public about their creation, there had to be a
middle man.

> This is a Free Software project. We rely on everyones help.

Then don't jump on someone calling constructive criticism "aggressive"
when all they are frustrated about is the inability to help.

Help those that like to help, the rest have better things to do than
to be writing messages to people they don't know.