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  • From: Robert Figura <rfigura AT aubergine.zwischengesicht.de>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] SMGL as GNU-certified Free(R)(TM) Distro?
  • Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 17:38:16 +0100

Am Thursday 03 November 2005 07:02 schrieb Seth Alan Woolley:

> I wanted to ping the list to see if there's substantial support behind
> meeting their criteria.

The first question to ask is what would be the purpose of becoming entirely
"Free(TM)".

According to the size of their list i can assume that we'd gain an elitary
status which i would consider good. GNU is not the only definition for
"free", however it is the most applied one.

I assume there is some protection of SMGL users to be gained regarding
possible legal issues.

There is also a style component. It >>sounds<< like a good tradition but i'm
not completely sure that GNU will maintain it's status of being _the_
definition of free software.

> Change the social contract to eliminate the "we support non-free
> software" section.

This is picky. The practical quality of SMGL would decrease if we'd abandon
bugzilla support for some spells. I think we cannot afford discarding all
documentation not exclusively related to GNU compatible software. (Or only
splitting it and weakening it's integrity)

> Eliminate the z-rejected grimoire to be hosted/maintained by a separate
> system (no SCM or website mingling, grimoire url to be explicitly added).

Some work to be done here.

What is about separating grimoire development altogether? Which practically
means a restricted social contract for sorcery development and some
grimoires but not for the distribution as a whole.

It might do the trick.

> Scan the grimoire for stuff that needs moved to the z-rejected section
> and do that. (The FSF keeps a list of GPL-compatible and
> non-GPL-compatible-but-free licenses.)

Maybe have another level of 'z-rejected', maybe called 'z-non-gnu'.

> Switch our SCM to something(s) other than perforce for everything.

Which is generally a good thing imo but as far as i remember we had
practical reasons for using perforce and the question would be if there are
Free(TM) alternatives now and graceful migration is possibe with these. I
do like bazaar-ng quite much but it lacks some important features.

> Who thinks this is worth it? Who thinks it's not worth it?

I cannot see any reason to make it high priority. I'd also rather like to
see having a spin-off which extracts the free components of SMGL.

Feels kind of insulting to be forced not to give the user the coice. But
this has been depicted as the dark side of bsd. I like bsd licensing
however...

Regards
- Robert Figura

--
/* mandlsig.c v0.23 (c) by Robert Figura */
I=1702;float O,o,i;main(l){for(;I--;putchar("oO .,\nm>cot.bitamea\
@urigrf <raguFit erobR"[I%74?I>837&874>I?I^833:l%5:5]))for(O=o=l=
0;O*O+o*o<(16^l++);o=2*O*o+I/74/11.-1,O=i)i=O*O-o*o+I%74*.04-2.2;}




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