We released beta7 last night. I think Sean scared people off by saying that this is the first of the betas to actually be of “beta” quality. Still, there have been about 15 thousand downloads of it so far, and very few bug reports. My colleagues deserve the credit for this, working very long and very hard to get as many of the bugs squashed as they could in the last week or so.

One interesting thing that I note afresh today, as I have in the past, is the “interesting” phenomena in which a user will think that multiple repeated requests will change the answer. One user responded to a series of questions in his ticket (#414) with simple repeated assertions that he dislikes the change to use only status icons. When I closed his ticket, he responded by opening five or ten new, entirely duplicate tickets. Another user, this time in #pidgin on irc.freenode.net, tried asking the same question in three or four different ways across an hour or two, hoping to find a different answer.

Still, overall it has been very quiet, which makes me happy. I hope, but do not expect, that the final release (hopefully later this week) will go as smoothly.

It has come to my attention that when I changed the SF Bug, RFE, Support, gtk-bugs, and rejected patches trackers to be visible to project members only, SF stopped sending emails out to people who had commented on those items, but are not project members.

I closed these trackers down shortly after our public release because it quickly became apparent that their existence was hindering the adoption of trac, and would continue to do so as long as they existed. In some cases, when requested to submit at trac instead of SF, some people would refuse, siting the fact that it means registering again, or that trac is in some way confusing. We (the project members) had decided that as good a home as SF has been to us, that it was time for us to grow beyond it. This combination of intransigence and our decision left me with very few options.

1. I could leave the SF trackers open, knowing that people would submit there, and knowing I intended to close every item there. This would result in some items only days or hours old being closed with a canned message, just like those months and years old. This would be confusing and frustrating for all involved.

2. I could close the trackers, and close the items in those trackers afterwards. I thought that this would continue to send an email to the submitter and any who had commented on that item. I have since been informed that this is not the case; only submitters and project members get emails. If it had worked as I thought, it would have been an ideal way to clean out the tickets and yet give users the opportunity to reopen any they were still concerned about.

3. I could attempt to import several thousand open items into trac. I rejected this because one of the flaws of the SF trackers is that the several thousand ticket size was too large for me to manage, and oppressively large for many other developers. Many tickets went unclosed, not because the issue was unfixed, but because no developer had read that ticket in a very long time. I decided that a clean sweep was the only way to get our ticketing back under control. Hopefully with the new development processes that we are implementing in our new space, we will be able to prevent the new trac ticketing from reaching that state of bloat at all.

I am sorry that the flaws in SF’s ticketing have caused this move to be a time of greater confusion than is strictly necessary. I will continue to try to provide the best support to our users that my available time allows, and I hope that you all will forgive, or at least understand, the decisions I have made.

UPDATE: I have learned that my information was bad; SF has in fact been sending emails to commenters as well as submitters and project members. This is a good thing.

Here is the link to it.

Today in the logs I notice that Verizon is denying all mail from pidgin.im. While less than pleased with this, I am also reluctant to jump through hoops for every ISP out there. We run very standard mailing list software (mailman), and with the sole exception of having migrated users over from the gaim-*@lists.sf.net mailing lists, you are only getting mail from us if you asked for it in some form.

Coming now, instead of last week, I suspect that this is not due to the vast amount of mail caused by importing stuff from subversion into monotone. Were it coming then, I would sympathize with the ISP. Even sane admins would balk at several thousand emails for a given user suddenly appearing without warning. Our mailing list traffic this week has been rather normal though, so I can only conclude that Verizon is reacting in a somewhat draconian manner.

If you are a Verizon user, and are not getting mail from us, I suggest you contact Verizon and take this issue up with them.

“Abortion, contraception and other attacks on motherhood cannot achieve equality because they undermine the premise that women and men are equal. Only if we assume that women, in their natural state, are less able than men to make valuable contributions to society, will we insist that women must be corrected, by chemicals or by surgery, to allow them to claim the equality which nature has denied them.” – Melinda Selmys

Today’s first reading is from the Acts of the Apostles, telling about the martyrdom of Saint Stephen.¹ Reading this, I am reminded that sometimes it is more important to proclaim the Truth than to remain on good terms with your listeners.

That being said, whenever possible, to do both is far better. Saint Stephen, help all those who attempt to stand up for the Truth of the Faith today and always.

In the last week or so, the level of spam reaching my inbox in the form of comments and trackbacks in need of moderation has grown from nearly none to many a day. I suspect this has to do with having one category of posts syndicated at planet.pidgin.im. As a result, I have installed two plugins that claim to help identify and prevent spam from reaching my notice without intruding on the submission of legitimate users, one for comments studying the tactics of common spam bots, and the other for trackbacks, requiring that a trackback be referring to a page that actually links to me. I hope this takes care of the issue, and that I need not resort to more invasive measures.

Fr. Frank Pavone, M.E.V. shares my excitement and reasoning.^[1] He goes on at much greater length, emphasizing the importance of electing pro-life officials, and looking ahead at some of the hints on future progress the decision gives.

Mr. Wesley J. Smith is cautiously pleased.^[2] He is concerned that this ruling can be seen as a affirmation of Roe and Casey. His legal analysis is not entirely gloomy though; he sees this as a step up, despite the affirmation.

Mr. Motte Brown does not share my optimism.^[1] He rightly notes that this does not really limit access to abortions, and that the alternative procedures are at least as gruesome as that which has been banned.

This is the first ban on abortion in any form to be upheld though. That is something to celebrate; it would not have happened before President Bush appointed our two newest justices.

“The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.”^[1] This is awesome news!

It is also just the first step. Abortion is murder, and until society recognizes that and reacts appropriately, we have a problem. Still, this is encouraging news.