Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Pieter Lenaerts <e-type AT sourcemage.org>]

quality, use, performance or necessity of packages A or B matters not in
this discussion.

what we want to decide is this:
do we remove non-free software from our official grimoires and server or
not?

if we don't: no chance to get on the list
if we do: I'm sure some people will publish and maintain a z-rejected
grimoire. We would have a lot of work to get the dependencies out of our
grimoires, but nothing's impossible

let's just stop claiming that gnumeric and abiword could replace OOo,
that java/flash are not necessary and nvidia owners are to be pitied. it
has nothing to do with the discussion what person A thinks of package B.


Op vr, 04-11-2005 te 01:02 -0800, schreef Seth Alan Woolley:
> On Thu, Nov 03, 2005 at 12:44:56PM -0500, Paul Mahon wrote:
> > I can't see why we would care about being on that list one way the
> > other. The truth is, is that there are packages out there for which
> > there are no decent (GNU)free alternatives exist, Java is an example.
> 
> You can't be serious.  Java coding is a choice one can make if they want 
> to write in a poorly-designed and monopoly-controlled language.
> 
> Just because we could build a java replacement doesn't mean we should.
> 
> > Just moving the grimoire to another host would still violate the
> > "spirit" of the list, we would still be maintaining it, and thus
> > advocate its use. 
> 
> Not if it's not officially supported by us and supported only be a 
> separate (possibly overlapping) group of developers that want to waste 
> their time helping The Man(SM).
> 
> > 
> > It looks like a bunch of changes which will make things more difficult
> > for new users, and we don't get anything for it except our name on some
> > wall no one much looks at.
> 
> We get the ethical and philosophical benefits that aren't being counted 
> because perhaps it's not very tangible.
> 
> Do we really want marketshare over a truly free and good product?  
> Personally I don't think the cathedral and the bazaar is perfectly 
> adequate at describing the process of free software developement.
> 
> It's, in fact, unfortunate that people like to follow ESR's lead.  Look 
> at what he's written, I think his experiment was a bust.
> 
> Seth
> 
> > 
> > I'm just not seeing the gain for us.
> > 
> > On Wed, 2005-02-11 at 22:02 -0800, Seth Alan Woolley wrote:
> > > http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions
> > > 
> > > If you look at the above link, you can see some Totally Free(R)(TM) 
> > > distros.
> > > 
> > > I wanted to ping the list to see if there's substantial support behind 
> > > meeting their criteria.
> > > 
> > > We'd need to do four things:
> > > 
> > > Change the social contract to eliminate the "we support non-free 
> > > software" section.
> > > 
> > > Eliminate the z-rejected grimoire to be hosted/maintained by a separate 
> > > system (no SCM or website mingling, grimoire url to be explicitly 
> > > added).
> > > 
> > > 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.)
> > > 
> > > Switch our SCM to something(s) other than perforce for everything.
> > > 
> > > Who thinks this is worth it?  Who thinks it's not worth it?
> > > 
> > > Seth
> > > 
> > > P.S.  I favor becoming as Free(R)(TM) as possible.  I will do what the 
> > > group desires, but I think it's something we should consider, at least.
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > SM-Discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/sm-discuss
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> > SM-Discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/sm-discuss
> > 
> 
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