19 May 2004 ashtong   » (Observer)

A while back I wrote a client/server modem sharing application (called LANdialler) in Python. I wrote it mainly because I lived in a shared house with several computers and a single phone line, and none of the tools available at the time did quite what I wanted.

Let's face it, with the advent of broadband programs like that aren't exactly massively popular.

However, to continue the story... Once I'd written it I uploaded it to SourceForge, announced it, and saw some activity on the web site. I had a few (but only a few) posts to the forums. It was put on a UK Linux magazine cover disk, and there were a lot of downloads logged on the SourceForge site. But bugger all feedback.

That was a couple of years ago. Since then the program has (for the most part) just worked, but the arrival of Python 2.2 made installation a bit tricky. I'd stopped using it myself by this point (I'd moved out of that house), but nobody complained that it was difficult to install and people were still downloading it every now and again. So I left it alone. Then Python support for GTK2 came along, my Dad complained that it no longer worked, and I recently decided to tart it up a bit.

So I ported it all forward to Python 2.3 and GTK2, bunged a note on the web site saying "new version available in CVS, hold on while I write new install scripts", and then I went and got side tracked with real life.

What surprises me - and this is why I'm posting - is that people are still downloading the old releases, and yet nobody has enquired about where these install scripts are. I'd have thought that if anybody cared, they'd have tried to prod me back to life.

I just wondered if other authors see the same kind of statistics, or whether or not it just means that I should retire the project and divert my efforts to something more useful to the masses...

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