There's apparently more to the story than that. I caught a whiff of it on
the Proxo newsletter, but I didn't care enough to really read it. I'm
happy as a clam with an older version of Proxo, so it doesn't bother me
that he quit updating.
There is not much more to the story than that.
Others have exaggerated the conflict afterwards though.
Quote from Scott Lemmon, the Author as found at Prox-List:
....
This is the only post I will make regarding Proxomiton.
Yes, I pulled the site down.
No, It's not because of Arne so no one should blame him. I'm not happy
with all those on the Yahoo list doing so.
I make lots of changes to the program with being human I sometimes
forget to document. I added this one because of a few emails
requesting it since it was a minor alteration (1 line of code). I
fogot about it until it was mentioned on the list.
Yes, I was hurt that Arne attacked me personally for this rather than
just making a case for changing it back - which I probably would have
been willing to do if enough people wanted it. I think my post at
Yahoo confirm this: As I said on the list, people will of course only
request something the program doesn't already do. So I know having a
number of requests for an item doesn't necessairly mean that's what
most people want.
I don't use "anon" proxies much myself anymore so I didn't think much
about it from that angle. To me having fail-over seem like a good idea
since it makes the connection itself more reliable. The basic argument
people requesting the feature made to me was "A proxy is to help your
connection - one that you can't connect to isn't helping". To be
bypassed the proxy actually has to fail to connect - usually after
several retries. The problem is many anon proxies are overloaded or
misconfigured so connection failures are not as uncommon as they are
with a normal proxy.
As Arne said, this isn't the first time I've considered giving it all
up. This is just the first time I've actually done it. I apologize,
I'm not perfect - all I was trying to do was the best I can. However,
if a change I considered so minor can get me labeled as a "betrayer of
trust" from someone I've long regarded with respect, then perhaps I
shouldn't be doing this at all.
In the end it's a matter of balance. There are many, many reasons for
me to give it up - not just this. In this day and age I even worry
someone might sue me because of it. I have to ask myself why devote so
much of my life to something when it can illicit this kind of reaction
from people. I've never asked that *anyone* use the program, and I'm
surely not offended if people wish to use something else.
.....
The reason why this became a problem was the difference in views between
the people who are very very serious about privacy issues, and Scott who
saw it from a practical side and did not think about anon proxies when
he made the program use a direct connection if the proxies failed.
Before he left he mended the relation to Arne and gave him a program fix
to distribute to the rest of the proxo users.
People who want to download Proxomitron will see that there are two
versions, one with the bypassing the proxy "feature/bug", and one
without it.
It's a pity he didn't make the program open source when he did not want
to develop it further himself.
, but I will