Re: Determining whether gnunet is connected

[awds]

Since GNUnet is currently an academic exercise, it should be removed
from main distribution repositories. For example: Anyone thinking to
try GNUnet on Debian-based machines would look in Synaptic and install
GNUnet v0.10.1. Presumably that build-version worked when it was first
included in the repositories, but now GNUnet is at v0.16.0 which is not
backward compatible.

The low version number should warn users away, but GNUnet in the
repositories is misleading given its low level of development.


-----Original Message-----
From: Tirifto <tirifto@posteo.cz>
To: help-gnunet@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Determining whether gnunet is connected
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2022 14:34:19 +0000

On Tue, 01 Mar 2022 20:28:22 +0000
Fungilife can be eternal <fungilife@protonmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

For what it’s worth, it is very clearly mentioned in the ‘Install’ page
on the website, accessible either from the navigation bar’s
‘Documentation’ menu, or by scrolling down the home page and clicking
‘Get started’. I would assume that anyone stumbling upon the GNUnet
website and wondering how they can get started wouldn’t miss it, but I
may just as well be wrong. More prominent it could be, in any case.

The package descriptions could mention it, too, but here I want to note
that I don’t recall many packages doing this. From what I’ve seen, most
packages only state their goals in their description, without
elaborating on their stage of development. The version being ‘zero
point
something’ should be a clear indicator that this is *not* in any way
finished and likely *not* fully functional. But it’s also true that
even some very functional software likes to stay on version zero for
too long, so perhaps this reasoning can’t be counted on. So I’m not
saying it’s a bad idea, just that it’s also not a no-brainer.