There seems to be an implicit assumption in some of the recent Posts (e.g. discussing polls to pick programming Languages), that we'll be building a new PBW from scratch.

Can I just throw in the suggestion that maybe we just need to overhaul (and document, and arrange for long-term maintenance) the current system? When working properly, PBW as is (or was) had an extremely rich feature set. It may not be the generic PBEM game-server that Gandalf is after, and may not have been built using our favourite tools, but it did the job specified - running lots of Space Empire games - very, very well. Now I know that going throuugh an existing chunk of (presumably undocumented) code is going to be difficult and unpleasant (and may leave us with IP limitations depending on the original programmers' attitude to copyright), but it offers us the following advantages.

1. We know somewhere on the PBW server is a system that works. The diagnosis and fixing process may be difficult, but all the components of a working system are definitely there.

2. It kills two birds with one stone. Remember, that our mission - should we choose to accept it - actually includes two tasks. The first is keeping the current PBW server up and running so that we can continue to play games. The second is restoring the lost PBW functionality and adding any extra new features we might need. The advantage of the overhaul approach, as opposed to a rebuild from scratch, is that it does both simultaneously. The nightmare scenario is that the current server fails completely (or just becomes badly unreliable), while a shiny new PBW II is 12 months away from completion.

Mark