<rant>
Freshmeat continues to operate with all the diplomatic tact
and unilateral benevolence of the New York Soup Nazi (ref.
Seinfield). They did list NTXShape there, but they edited
the description down to only mention the parts that run on
Unix "today". So I posted a comment saying "uh, we
also have API bindings for Visual Basic and a graphical
interface for ArcView - and with volunteer support I'd like
to make cross-platform bindings for Python and/or SWIG; and
a cross-platform graphical interface". But, instead of
helping me enlist people so I could make this software
better for Unix users, they said "Visual Basic is not
Unix. ArcView is not Unix. No freshmeat for you!"
</rant>
salmoni: thanks for the vote of confidence. I shouldn't knock freshmeat; I'm glad they exist. They'll help Unix users find NTXShape, even if their editors won't help me find volunteers to help improve it.
Goal Drift: I'm not sure where I saw that last night, maybe raph linked it. My goal is for NTXShape to be known by, and useful to, those who need it. Making it better is a secondary goal. I should keep that in mind.
At first I thought that, in blocking my comments, Freshmeat's editors had lost sight of their goals. Upon thinking about it some more, and reading their "about" page, I realize their purpose is to catalogue software so Unix users can find it. That is the service they provide. By bringing more eyeballs to the software, they might encourage or even help the author to improve it further but that's a side-effect, not a goal. (Since FreshMeat and SourceForge are both owned by OSDN, perhaps they need this clear division of purpose so they don't steal one another's thunder.)