DCE RPC documentation fund is collecting dust...

[Gregory M. Turner]

My apologies for not announcing this sonner, but it seems that the DCE RPC 
documentation package, which many of you kindly donated funds for, is a 
no-go.  I've spent some time researching what, if anything, we need from 
OpenGroup, and unfortunately, I've never been able to get a coherent answer, 
even from OpenGroup's sales people.  

Part of the problem seems to be that the DCE standard is "discontinued" by 
OpenGroup as a project.  We wouldn't care if we knew what documents had 
relevance to wine.  But it turns out that DCE covers a lot more than just 
RPC, most of which is not of interest to wine's RPC implementation.  The RPC 
part of the standard, as far as I can tell, is freely available for download, 
including the fascinating "DCOM/ActiveX" standard (which refers to a separate 
ORPC standards document I have been unable to find, I'm afraid, to document 
the ORPC wire protocol :(; btw, I think Microsoft let their similar document 
fall of the 'net as well, you'll see links to it in various places... but I 
digress....)

So, insofar as I have questions about whether or not there's anything useful 
in there, OpenGroup's sales lady is unable to help -- she don't even seem 
able to give me the information thats available on the website, much less 
elaborate on it.  That leaves me with no choice but to guess what is useful 
based on the information available to me: which seems to indicate that we 
don't need anything we can't get for free from OpenGroup.

So, the obvious question is, where does everyone's hard-earned money go?  I've 
confirmed with Jeremy that refunds are an option; if you want your money 
back, let Jeremy know, and presumably he will make arrangements with you in 
private to get your money returned.

For those of you who would rather have your donations go to some other 
wine-releated cause, the matter is open for discussion.  One idea which has 
been tossed around in private discussions between myself, Jeremy and Dimi is 
to rededictae these funds to the Wine Party Fund or some other wine 
conference fund.  Another would be to find some other documentation we need 
to buy and use it for that.  But, it's your money, and since every 
contributor essentially has veto power over their own portion of the funds, 
we obviously want to build some kind of consensus.

Sorry it took me so long to break this news, I spend a fair amount of time 
trying to salvage the original plan to buy the DCE doc's but it just didn't 
seem right to spend it on something which potentially has no value to wine... 
and then the guilt and procrastination set in... ;)  Thanks for your patience 
on this matter.

-- 
"Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding
danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is
either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward
change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is
strength undefeatable." --Helen Keller

gmt