[Savannah-hackers] Looking for Someone to Take Over the Development of Aspell

[Kevin Atkinson]

I am not sure if this is the best place to post this but I thought it 
would be a good starting point.

As announced in March I no longer have the time or interest to develop 
and maintain Aspell (http://aspell.net):

  March 17, 2002

  Well I knew is was going to happen eventually.  I officially lost
  interest in Aspell.  This means that there is likely to be little
  development on Aspell by me.  However, I am hoping some other people
  with a vested interested in Aspell will take over the development of
  the New Aspell.  The current code base for the New Aspell is what I
  hope to be very clean code and easy to maintain.  Current work to be
  done of the New Aspell include.

  * Integrate Kevin B. Hendricks's affix compression support found in
    MySpell into the New Aspell.

  * Add filter support.   This is not nearly as easy a task as it my
    appear to be a first glance.

  * Create a functional Aspell utility to replace the original Aspell
    utility which should have the ability to emulate Ispell's pipe mode
    and the ability to functional as an independent spell checker.

  * Documentation

  I have tried very hard to make the New Aspell easy to maintain and
  extend.  I really hope people will start using the New Aspell code
  base rather than using either AbiWords Ispell hack or Kevin
  B. Hendricks's very simple MySpell.  Hopefully, by opening the New
  Aspell development to others application developers can transform the
  new Aspell into something worth using.

  Thank You.
  Kevin Atkinson
  Aspell Maintainer

That being said, having a good spell checker I fell is rather important
for a complete GNU System.  The only other real alternative to Aspell is
Ispell which is rather dated and can not be used as a library.  Thus, I am
hoping someone from the FSF will be willing to take over the development
of Aspell.  Aspell is written in fairly modern C++ so I expect anyone who
wises to take over the development of Aspell to be fairly competent with
C++.  Aspell is currently hosted on Savannah, but it is not part of
the GNU Project.  However, I have absolutely no problem with it becoming
part GNU Project.  The only thing I really insist on is that the license 
remains LGPL.  I also have a fairly good idea of how what I expect the 
Aspell to become, however since I am no longer going to be developing 
Aspell, I can be flexible in that area.

If anyone is seriously interested in taking over the development of Aspell
please contact me.  But first please look over the material at
http://aspell.net to make sure you know what you are getting yourself 
into.

Thanks in advance.

---
http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org