Latest OpenSmtp.Net Release
So last night I wrapped up the latest version [01.09.6] of OpenSmtp.Net (http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensmtp-net/) and plan to release it sometime tomorrow after I update the help documents and build the installer version. Most of the work on this version was related to bug fixes due to MIME content-type errors, quoted printabe encoding, and email address validation. New features include support for SMTP pipelining and the ability to limit to log file size, to avoid those nasty situations where a log file can kill a machine by using up all available disk space.
Open source development on OpenSmtp.Net is really working out as far as bug fixes and feed back is concerned. I have gotten a lot of support lately from a lot of people around the world. For instance, someone spotted and fixed the MIME content-type error and sent me the changes, I just had to merge the fixes into the current code base, after looking them over. The encoding problem was spotted by a three separate developers from around the world and they all offered feedback and bug fixes. The email address validation was a C# port of Jeffrey Friedl's PERL regex, which is basically the end all be all of email address parsing. Before I implemented the port I contacted Mr. Friedl and asked for his permission, since he was the original copyright owner and my work would simply be a derivative of his. He responded that I could use it and thanked me for asking him first. In my mind that is how open source development is supposed to work. We all work together to achieve a common goal and we all reap the rewards. In this case we get to use a library that is superior to the built in System.Web.Mail classes and can compete with some commercial products in terms of funtionality.
Most of my time from here forth will be focused on not only supporting the current version but beefing up the documentation, help files, and examples. I find that our lack of docs and help might leave some developers out and I have never subscribed to the "it should be hard" mentality that the open source community is notorious for. I want everyone to use this library, plain and simple. Not just those that know how to compile from source or debug a C# error.
After that we have some big changes planned. Jason Kirkpatrick is currently working on a design to incorporate POP3 into the current code base. I think this will make our component more attractive to developers, allowing both sending and receiving of mail and a local mail store. This project will be called Arrowana. An Arrowana, also called a Dragon Fish, represents power and is supposed to bring people good fortune. The main reasons for the name change are:
A. This means a drastic change to the code base and the new version will be a serious split from the original. Basically it's a new project.
B. The name OpenSmtp was causing confusion with another project named OpenSmtp associated with Qmail.
And that''s it for this week. I hope to write later about my ordeal with quoted printable encoding and show some good use of bit shifting and bitwise operations.