Faked Questions with Answers

Is Pike forked?

No, Pike isn't forked. Pike has just moved to a new maintainer. The code is the same, most of the people are the same, the URL is different. There was some talk about doing a fork a while back, but since the development in the Roxen Internet Software Pike repository was steadily declining, it was decided to mediate between Roxen and another party to move the development elsewhere instead. There can't be a fork if there is only one active branch. Pike 7.2 still has its repository at Roxen IS, but Pike 7.3 and future versions are developed at IDA.

You lazy cows, have you done nothing in half a year?

We have, but much of it wasn't directly Pike-related. Having a snappy conversation between a university bureaucracy and a company focused on other products also turned out to be both complicated and time consuming.

Why doesn't Roxen IS host Pike anymore?

From Roxens perspective, Pike was sufficiently good to solve their needs, and the additional features on Roxens wish list were too expensive to realize. Hence Roxen thought it might be time for someone else to take over Pike development. If you've read the Pike history page, you know that this isn't the first time that Pike has moved.

The Software and Systems (SaS) division of the Department of Computer and Information Science (IDA) at Linköping University (LiU), and the Programming Environments Lab (PELAB) in particular, found the language Pike interesting for the RISE project and thought it would contribute to their research to have an advanced language of their own. The research at pelab includes software engineering tools and architectures, programming languages and environments, including compilers, debuggers, testing tools, parallel and real-time programming tools, so there are many areas where Pike and pelab can be beneficial to each other.

Why did IDA take on Pike?

The Software and Systems (SaS) division of the Department of Computer and Information Science (IDA) at Linköping University (LiU), and the Programming Environments Lab (PELAB) in particular, found the language Pike interesting for the RISE project and thought it would contribute to their research to have an advanced language of their own. The research at pelab includes software engineering tools and architectures, programming languages and environments, including compilers, debuggers, testing tools, parallel and real-time programming tools, so there are many areas where Pike and pelab can be beneficial to each other.

Pike is released under GNU GPL, GNU LGPL and MPL. All intellectual rights such as copyright and trademark have been transferred to IDA. IDA will consider all code contributions to the main branch as gifts and will maintain the view that the entire Pike repository is copyrighted by IDA. This also means that IDA will have full power to take legal actions against anyone who is amazing enough to manage to break the license. If Pike is free or not really depends on how you define freedom. Form your own opinion.

Is Pike free?

Pike is released under GNU GPL, GNU LGPL and MPL. All intellectual rights such as copyright and trademark have been transferred to IDA. IDA will consider all code contributions to the main branch as gifts and will maintain the view that the entire Pike repository is copyrighted by IDA. This also means that IDA will have full power to take legal actions against anyone who is amazing enough to manage to break the license. If Pike is free or not really depends on how you define freedom. Form your own opinion.

In order to make the transition as smooth as possible, the main repository for Pike 7.2 is located at Roxen Internet Software (and occasionally rsync:ed to IDA), while the other Pike repositories are located at IDA (and frequently rsync:ed to Roxen). So until we get a CVS pserver running on this machine it is fine to continue using the Roxen CVS server. The CVS viewer on this site will however be updated before the one at Roxen Community.

Fredrik Hübinette has decided to take some time off from Pike development and is currently doing other things. Perhaps he'll return some day...

Where can I get Pike?

In order to make the transition as smooth as possible, the main repository for Pike 7.2 is located at Roxen Internet Software (and occasionally rsync:ed to IDA), while the other Pike repositories are located at IDA (and frequently rsync:ed to Roxen). So until we get a CVS pserver running on this machine it is fine to continue using the Roxen CVS server. The CVS viewer on this site will however be updated before the one at Roxen Community.

Fredrik Hübinette has decided to take some time off from Pike development and is currently doing other things. Perhaps he'll return some day...

We've been working on fixing all the critical bugs in Pike 7.3 in order to make Pike 7.4. The current status of Pike 7.3 is pretty good, but we'd like to kill some more bugs before release. Your help is welcome.

What about Hubbe?

Fredrik Hübinette has decided to take some time off from Pike development and is currently doing other things. Perhaps he'll return some day...

We've been working on fixing all the critical bugs in Pike 7.3 in order to make Pike 7.4. The current status of Pike 7.3 is pretty good, but we'd like to kill some more bugs before release. Your help is welcome.

When Hubbe quit working for Roxen IS, he released a version of Pike 7.3 as Pike 7.4. Roxen IS forced the 7.4 release to be dropped, since it had not passed any QA tests, and contained several known, serious bugs. Pike 7.4 could have been rereleased under a different name than Pike, but Hubbe decided against it.

Apart from eventually having Pike 7.4 released, and then starting the next development cycle with Pike 7.5, we plan to migrate all the infrastructure of community.roxen.com with friends to pike.ida.liu.se. This includes the Pike mailing lists and bug crunch. All and any ideas of new applications and information is of course welcome, as is help with implementing it.

When can we expect Pike 7.4?

We've been working on fixing all the critical bugs in Pike 7.3 in order to make Pike 7.4. The current status of Pike 7.3 is pretty good, but we'd like to kill some more bugs before release. Your help is welcome.

When Hubbe quit working for Roxen IS, he released a version of Pike 7.3 as Pike 7.4. Roxen IS forced the 7.4 release to be dropped, since it had not passed any QA tests, and contained several known, serious bugs. Pike 7.4 could have been rereleased under a different name than Pike, but Hubbe decided against it.

Apart from eventually having Pike 7.4 released, and then starting the next development cycle with Pike 7.5, we plan to migrate all the infrastructure of community.roxen.com with friends to pike.ida.liu.se. This includes the Pike mailing lists and bug crunch. All and any ideas of new applications and information is of course welcome, as is help with implementing it.

Most of the discussions are held in LysKOM and on the Pike mailing list. To join the LysKOM discussions you download a client, log in into kom.lysator.liu.se and join the conferences "Pike (-) help", "Pike (-) general", "Pike (-) developers forum", "Pike (-) ticket import" and "pike.ida.liu.se (-) improvement discussions". To join the Pike mailing list, mail pike-request@roxen.com.

I've heard that there is a 7.4 released?

When Hubbe quit working for Roxen IS, he released a version of Pike 7.3 as Pike 7.4. Roxen IS forced the 7.4 release to be dropped, since it had not passed any QA tests, and contained several known, serious bugs. Pike 7.4 could have been rereleased under a different name than Pike, but Hubbe decided against it.

Apart from eventually having Pike 7.4 released, and then starting the next development cycle with Pike 7.5, we plan to migrate all the infrastructure of community.roxen.com with friends to pike.ida.liu.se. This includes the Pike mailing lists and bug crunch. All and any ideas of new applications and information is of course welcome, as is help with implementing it.

Most of the discussions are held in LysKOM and on the Pike mailing list. To join the LysKOM discussions you download a client, log in into kom.lysator.liu.se and join the conferences "Pike (-) help", "Pike (-) general", "Pike (-) developers forum", "Pike (-) ticket import" and "pike.ida.liu.se (-) improvement discussions". To join the Pike mailing list, mail pike-request@roxen.com.

Sure. We are going to have a Pike conference in Linköping, Sweden, on the 22nd and 23rd of August, with workshops on the 24th of August. You are all welcome to come visit us then, listen to talks about Pike and its applications and buy us a beer. If you have something you would like to present on the conference we would be even happier. Most of us prefer Coca Cola though. More details will be posted here and elsewhere later.