Subject: Re: bug#26102: movemail can't connect mail server

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2017 17:33:03 +0200

> From: Glenn Morris <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked],  [email-masked],  [email-masked]
> Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 20:15:02 -0400
> 
> I want to point out that answering (or reading) this bug report (and the
> previous help-gnu-emacs post) is an act that takes maintainer time,
> therefore the maintenance cost is not zero.

It's zero as in "negligible", since the time it took to understand the
cockpit errors was short, and it's not like questions about movemail
get posted frequently (I don't remember any for a long time).

Neither did I see anyone from the developers group besides myself
interested in answering the question, as long as the actual problem
was on the table.

> (Obviously Paul and I have increased the short-term cost by starting a
> discussion

Indeed.

> And when anyone needs to read (whether or not they change it) the
> relevant support code in rmail or lib-src/Makefile, that's a cost too.
> Yes, the cost is very small, but these things add up over time.
> 
> We clearly don't have enough people to maintain the code we have.
> So personally I'm pro-simplification

In general, so am I.  But this particular bike shed is not worth
wasting time on.