http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=429767

I wrote and have been maintaining the Archive::Zip module.

However, I no longer am able to continue maintaining it and am looking for a qualified person to hand its maintenance over to.

This module is being used to process millions (billions?) of email messages per day, as it is used by the Amavis and MailScanner projects to scan zip attachments. It is also being used in a number of other mission-critical applications.

There is from time to time some time pressure on the maintenance of A::Z, because every time a new virus or email worm finds a new way to construct a bogus zip file or damage an existing one the mail scanner people send email asking for mods to A::Z so that they can still scan the affected zips.

I no longer use Perl for anything longer than 1-liners, having moved on to other languages. I'm one of the leaders of the Squeak (Smalltalk) project, and I also find that Ruby feels better to me now than Perl does. As a result, my knowledge of Perl has faded from disuse.

Additionally, I just don't have the time to do a good job of maintaining the module, having taken on far too many commitments.

tye was kind enough to pick up Algorithm::Diff for me.

Is there someone who might be capable of and willing to pick up Archive::Zip as well?

If you're interested, please contact me via email at ned -at- bike-nomad.com

Thanks,

Ned Konz

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Seeking a maintainer for Archive::Zip
by hakkr (Chaplain) on Feb 10, 2005 at 16:41 UTC
    Hi Ned,

    I'm too busy to help but would just like to say its a great module, platform independent zip is very useful.

    As these mail scanners are using it have you tried asking them to contribute or self patch?

    Is there any IP problems with the compression algorithms involved?
      I figured I'd ask here first, but asking them to help would be a good idea too. The compression algorithm that is used is just Zlib; in fact, I'm using Compress::Zlib to do the actual (de)compression. What A::Z does is to handle the archive part (as well as making it easy to do compression, decompression, building archives, etc.).
      Is there any IP problems with the compression algorithms involved?

      Why would there be? gzip and zip (yes they are related) were precisely developed to be free of IP encumberment. See Zlib's homepage:

      zlib is designed to be a free, general-purpose, legally unencumbered -- that is, not covered by any patents -- lossless data-compression library for use on virtually any computer hardware and operating system.

      Zlib is a library that handles both gzip and zip compression, the canonical Perl interface to it is Compress::Zlib, which in turn is what Archive::Zip uses for the actual compression and decompression of the ZIP archive files.

Re: Seeking a maintainer for Archive::Zip
by Courage (Parson) on Feb 13, 2005 at 09:53 UTC
    did you have a maintainer already?

    If not, I can offer my efforts; my CPAN ID is VKON.