Hello.

guppy, i believe your the lead developer on the eggdrop project, the IRC bot.

I'm the guy who everyone goes to whenever there is a problem. I was the maintainer for Eggdrop v1.6; however, I have since handed that role over to Wcc. I'm basically the head of eggheads.org.

And eggheads.org is ?

Eggheads.org is the group that is the current development for Eggdrop -- we started in April of 1999.

And the bot was originally written by Roby Pointer, does he still contribute ?

Robey hasn't worked on Eggdrop for a long time -- like everything in life I believe he got bored and handed it off to beldin's development team. Robey works for Danger Inc. now and has a homepage up at http://www.lag.net/~robey/.

So how did you get involved ?

I remember getting onto IRC a very long time ago -- and hearing people talk about "bots" and going "I want one" .. then one day, I met a person named Segfault who had his own Linux server and for some reason, he gave me an account. From there ... I joined #eggdrop and said I could write them a Tcl script (I lied, I didn't know Tcl yet) in exchange for op status -- and somehow, I ended up running the channel within a few months.

Heh, so you fluked an account and ran an eggdrop I presume ?

Yup. I had to wait for like 2 months before I actually could because he didn't have all the required stuff installed and couldn't do it until he went back to school :)

What role did it play ?

It helped to hold ops in #eggdrop because at that time you could netride a split and takeover channels easily.

Did the coders and other contributers to the eggdrop project also op in the channel ?

Not really -- we weren't a very popular eggdrop channel in the beginning .. at the time, the channel was #eggdrop@efnet ... it wasn't until later when more and more people picked coming to the Undernet for help instead of going to other networks that we started to get some of the coders for Eggdrop to join. But really, no one from the old development team hung out with us.
So, a small group of people decided to release our own eggdrop. Eggdrop 1.3.24i (where "i" stood for independent) -- Arthur2 and myself were the first people to decide that. This started a rather large flame war aimed mostly at me for turning everyone against the old development team .. the old development team ended up killing off Eggdrop2. And from then on, we were considered the new official development team of Eggdrop.

Wow... a period of tension between you guys I can image, are feelings still raw ?

No idea -- they never hung out in #eggdrop since they had their own network; however, as far I as know .. I'm probably still not very well liked.

* yeager raises an eyebrow

It is water under the bridge :) I don't take being flamed on IRC personally.

Whats was your main role, and what role do you play these days in the development of eggs ?

My main role is making sure everything works. I play less of a role in development because I have less time -- stdarg is the head of Eggdrop1.7 development and is doing a wonderful job. I've done this for a long time and it is nice to have a great group of people around me who know how Eggdrop should work.
And if you must know -- I am getting closer and closer to retiring from Eggdrop development completely (the date hasn't been set yet)

How many people directly contribute to the baseline ?

Thats tough to nail down -- it depends on a lot things. You get times when no one does anything and then you get times where people are coming out of the wood work to fix bugs :)

* yeager nods
The usual open source environment then eh ?

Yes.

Lots of laziness followed by spurts of madness and code

Exactly.

1.7 is the latest in development, anything funky we can look forward to ?

Tons.
Uhm ... lets see here, It currently supports Tcl, Perl, and Javascript as programming languages :)

Nice

It is going to be basically a rewrite of Eggdrop to get rid of years of bad coding

* yeager notices the crowd go "ooooh"
So 1.7 is going to be a major improvement ?

It should be a leaner, meaner Eggdrop. stdarg is doing wonders. Beyond that -- we want to make it easier to setup and run .. easier to addon too, faster, etc ...

Is there a release date ?

No, because we'd have to change it anyways :) It will be ready when its ready. But it will be a totally different Eggdrop.

Will it be backwards compatible with previous bots, with respects to botnets and userlist sharing ?

No -- well, the botnet will be probably but not totally. Userlist sharing needs to be redone and done properly this time. Compatibility was not one of our design goals because if you try to keep everything compatiable, you end up with the same ole garbage you had before.
The only thing that won't change will the name :)

Whats the most interesting / funniest implementation of an eggdrop you've seen yet ?

I saw someone control a CISCO router with his eggdrop for his work network.

* yeager blinks

Yeah, I dunno either. He was smoking crack I think. It was neat nonetheless.

Remember the name of the bot ?

Nope. This was ... 5 years ago

So with 1.7 on the way out, what do you see as the future for the bot ? are there any grand plans after 1.7, although 1.7 sounds like a major overhaul anyway "watch this place for many . releases"

The future? More people hacking away on Eggdrop -- it is the application that just won't die :) I, myself, want to venture into other things (like a new IRC protocol) and let other people have all the fun I have right now :)

Do you ever consider looking into adding some AI to the bot?

The default eggdrop? probably not -- that is why we have scripting and modules so people have something to do. Most people don't want AI .. most people don't want alot of things -- which is
why we develop the core and let others expand. Plus, other people always come up with better ideas than us it seems :P~

A good philosophy.
Do you find the open source environment in which the bot has been developed is a productive one? Or is it hampered by lack of professionalism

There is professionalism .. just not the usual kind. Eggdrop isn't a product people would buy ... nor do I think any IRC bot is. The open source environment is great because it lets people hack on the code whenever they want.

Who owns the source control database? Or does that move from place to place?

The code is kept on our CVS server on eggheads.org but because Eggdrop is GPL -- anyone could take the code and start their own version of Eggdrop. Which is great because that is how we started. If another group of people can do it better than us -- then good ... because the best people should be doing it.

Do you have any idea where the name "eggdrop" came from ?

The rumor is Robey's sister loved Eggdrop soup and was a die hard Vegan .. and Robey one day to make her mad, told her that Eggdrop soup had chicken broth in it. Thats just a rumor though :)

* yeager smiles
So if someone wants an eggdrop, wheres the best place to go? eggheads.org ?

http://www.geteggdrop.com -- we throw in the automatic download for free :)
But yes, http://www.eggheads.org is a great place also .. just you gotta do more clicking to download it!

And anything you'd like to say about your impending retirement ?

Yes, my fiancee loves the idea :P~

Set a date ?

Soon.
Hehe
Within the year.

Well good luck and all the best for the development of 1.7, thanks guppy

Thanks, good luck to the new irc-junkie also :)