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If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

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Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#51

Post by mannykannot »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #49
pnt12 wrote: post #2

I agree: Canonical should make it easier for developers to strip the company's trademarks when forking their applications. Canonical's relationship with the rest of the FOSS community always seemed a bit screwed up to me. They try to make Ubuntu the best Linux distro while ignoring what all the other ones are doing. All other distros seem much more friendly towards integration between projects, to benefit from the sh…

I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world. They set their own agenda with limited cooperation. The FOSS obsession with "community" and "integration" is myopic and abhorrent. As if everyone must converge on one approach, one vanguard. There are scantly any problem domains where only one solution applies. Now, Canonical keeping to themselves has a very crucial…

>I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world.

That is why I watch its progress with a certain degree of suspicion (disclaimer: I am a user of Apple and Canonical products.)

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#52

Post by adekok »

purpled_haze wrote: post #40
fiatjaf wrote: post #25

Travis-CI is open source, but it's impossible to host.

Open source != free

The ISC DHCP server is "open source", in that the source is available. It's "free" in that anyone can download it and use it.

But... try getting patches in. Unless you're a paying member of the ISC consortium, you can't. There are performance problems going back a decade which are firmly in the "won't fix" category.

OpenSSL is similar.

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#53

Post by simula67 »

weland wrote: post #47
delonia wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL says that the software is "as is", no warranty of any kind. Similarly, I could scream to have the developers to perform some testing and provide a bit of warranty. With Ubuntu and any other software, you get the source and it is up to you to deal with the replacement of any trademark strings. What packages are included in Ubuntu, changes all the time and the code changes as well. How can a policy document be…

I don't necessarily agree with how mjg59 chooses to resolve his issues, but it's hard not to get the impression that he's a little right about this. The problem is precisely this: > With Ubuntu and any other software , you get the source and it is up to you to deal with the replacement of any trademark strings. (Emphasis mine) That's not true of any other software! I'm not sure how things are for RHEL, but I imagine…

To add to your point, Mozilla publishes a clear policy on usage of its trademarks [1]. This has enabled Debian to maintain a rebranded version of Firefox called Iceweasel [2]

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/

[2] https://wiki.debian.org/Iceweasel

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#54

Post by lorenzhs »

delonia wrote: post #24

"If you are smart enough, you can spin anything towards the direction of your choosing." We see this all the time in online communities and we see it again with all this "hatred" against the Ubuntu community. Here is Mark Shuttleworth replying to Garret: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/38467.html?thread=1474883#cmt147... So Garret contacted Ubuntu for some unspecified project that he claimed he wanted to start. In realit…

Your comments in this thread read like you have a personal grudge against Matthew Garrett. Please keep it professional.

> So Garret contacted Ubuntu for some unspecified project that he claimed he wanted to start. In reality, he was mining for quotes to misinterpret. Sad git.

Trying to create some legal security around derivatives of Ubuntu, he asked for clarification in general, not about any particular project, but about any possible project started by anyone. The question is really quite clear: "What precisely does one need to change for Canonical to be comfortable that one isn't trying to pass it off as Ubuntu". Their answer was "we won't tell you".

It looks to me like you're trying to spin this somehow to make Matthew Garrett look bad, accusing him of spinning it to make Canonical look bad. While the whole exchange could have been handled better on both sides, I don't see how Matthew Garret is to blame for Canonical's unwillingness to clarify their IP policy.

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#55

Post by hohenheim »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #49
pnt12 wrote: post #2

I agree: Canonical should make it easier for developers to strip the company's trademarks when forking their applications. Canonical's relationship with the rest of the FOSS community always seemed a bit screwed up to me. They try to make Ubuntu the best Linux distro while ignoring what all the other ones are doing. All other distros seem much more friendly towards integration between projects, to benefit from the sh…

I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world. They set their own agenda with limited cooperation. The FOSS obsession with "community" and "integration" is myopic and abhorrent. As if everyone must converge on one approach, one vanguard. There are scantly any problem domains where only one solution applies. Now, Canonical keeping to themselves has a very crucial…

Canonical's contribution is welcomed as long as people could continue it without getting blocked by their IP.

There is no obsession over "community" or "integration" as you stated. It is a valid concern that if others can not contribute freely, we are killing the essential of what made Ubuntu possible.

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#56

Post by weland »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #49
pnt12 wrote: post #2

I agree: Canonical should make it easier for developers to strip the company's trademarks when forking their applications. Canonical's relationship with the rest of the FOSS community always seemed a bit screwed up to me. They try to make Ubuntu the best Linux distro while ignoring what all the other ones are doing. All other distros seem much more friendly towards integration between projects, to benefit from the sh…

I'm not sure why you think this is a bad thing. Canonical is a corollary to Apple in the Linux world. They set their own agenda with limited cooperation. The FOSS obsession with "community" and "integration" is myopic and abhorrent. As if everyone must converge on one approach, one vanguard. There are scantly any problem domains where only one solution applies. Now, Canonical keeping to themselves has a very crucial…

> Now, Canonical keeping to themselves has a very crucial advantage: they leave everyone else alone. They stay in their corner, they don't bother, they don't intervene

I certainly get why it would be in their interest to not have much collaboration. But if that's a problem for them, they should not have based their business around GPLd products. All these problems could very easily go away if Ubuntu were a FreeBSD distribution, not a Linux one.

This "stay in their corner, don't bother, don't intervene" does bother developers who increasingly have to code for Windows, OS X, Linux and, separately, Ubuntu. It's very unpleasant, and they're getting a lot of hate because users are suffering just because Canonical's business plan was shit.

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#57

Post by kspaans »

rms_returns wrote: post #48
netheril96 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I am wrong, but to my understanding, both Unity and Mir are open source, and nothing stops other distros from adopting it.

The spirit of free-software has died now, it no longer has the spark that did during the time of Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds. As a result, rather than working towards a united goal of empowering users with the power of FOSS tools, we started having these ego battles of "mine vs your distro", "gnome vs unity", "systemd vs upstart", etc. Its true that Linux has choice and FOSS is all about having choice. But th…

You mean GNU/Linux. Where is RMS and what have you done with him!?

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#58

Post by newjersey »

simula67 wrote: post #53
weland wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily agree with how mjg59 chooses to resolve his issues, but it's hard not to get the impression that he's a little right about this. The problem is precisely this: > With Ubuntu and any other software , you get the source and it is up to you to deal with the replacement of any trademark strings. (Emphasis mine) That's not true of any other software! I'm not sure how things are for RHEL, but I imagine…

To add to your point, Mozilla publishes a clear policy on usage of its trademarks [1]. This has enabled Debian to maintain a rebranded version of Firefox called Iceweasel [2] [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/ [2] https://wiki.debian.org/Iceweasel

To add to that, Firefox sync work well with iceweasel at least in my personal experience. My understanding is that iceweasel is Firefox, just an older version with security patches as needed.

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#59

Post by creshal »

vacri wrote: post #32
creshal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're open source, but they rely on so much ubuntu-specific infrastructure and patches that it's infeasible to get them running anywhere else. Cf. the effort necessary to get Unity running on Arch: https://github.com/chenxiaolong/Unity-for-Arch You have to rip out and replace a lot of software, all the way down to GTK itself, just to make it work.

Sounds like Redhat's systemd: "if you want to run it, you have to replace most everything."

Init systems are, by nature, highly invasive. Systemd's requirements don't fundamentally differ from modern sysvinit derivatives or upstart or whatnot in that regard.

Unity, on the other hand, is a bloody desktop environment. You can install dozens of those (or could, if there were that many) in parallel without any modifications… with the sole exception of Unity.

Re: If it's not practical to redistribute, it's not free software in practice

#60

Post by baldfat »

pjmlp wrote: post #50
baldfat wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read this it actually screamed OpenSUSE is a great alternative. I seriously can't see any other Distro going out of its way to be easily distributed OS with the https://susestudio.com/ and https://build.opensuse.org for packages for SUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc...

My last SuSE was 6.3. How is the overall OpenSuSE experience nowadays? Since I spend most of my time on Windows anyway, I ended up settling with Ubuntu for my netbook and VMs.

I really couldn't be happier with a Distro. It is super stable and easy to upgrade. This computer at work has been over 5 years of just sudo zypper dup after a one line command to rename the repos.

The ability to install packages with https://build.opensuse.org is such a better system than ppa.

For the last three years I use i3 (Tiled Window Manager) and works great on in VM at my Windows machines. Still sad to see so many people left due to the Microsoft deal and haven't come back to give it a try again.

EDIT: If you use a command line package manager zypper is best in class. Fedora actually incorporated zypper features and code into its yum replacement.

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