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Nano is no longer a GNU project

nano-editor.org

71–80 of 240 posts

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#71

don't want to sound nasty , but is anyone there using nano really ? i know it come by default in some distros but that's about it really.

yep. Beeing a DevOps since many years and still use nano for quick edits on ssh because I don't use vi(m) anywhere. Why should I learn a new editor which behaves totally different when I can use nano which behaves quite similar to my existing tools. And as you say it's on nearly every distro. On emergency I still know how to use vi... but that does not mean I like it very much.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#72

don't want to sound nasty , but is anyone there using nano really ? i know it come by default in some distros but that's about it really.

Every once in a while I'm forced to use it because it's set as default on some servers until I close it in anger and get vim installed :P

How about vi for a quick edit? I haven't come across a distro without it so far (iirc it's part of the posix spec).

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, if you contribute to a project for example by sending a patch to it by email or pull request then you agree to be bound by the license. Even if there is no copyright assignment. Otherwise you would not have the right to modify the software to write your patch in the first place. This just seems like common sense to me.

The problem is if the maintainer wants to change the license (Like GPL2 -> GPL3). That's only possible if the contributors have signed over copyright, or the maintainer can track down every person who ever sent a patch, and get them to agree.

I don't think GPL2 -> GPL3 is a valid example of that. Usually it is to dual-license with a non-open-source license or some other incompatible open-source licenses.

The GPL "upgrade" clause,

> Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#74
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know that according to copy rights, open source projects are mess. Nobody tried it in the court, but if some developer contributing to project went to court saying "This part of code is mine, I don't want it to be modified by other people", then the project could be in trouble. Nobody tried that (yet). That's why some OS projects require signing Developer Certificates of Origin etc.

The way I see it, if you contribute to a project for example by sending a patch to it by email or pull request then you agree to be bound by the license. Even if there is no copyright assignment. Otherwise you would not have the right to modify the software to write your patch in the first place. This just seems like common sense to me.

What matters is the way the law sees it.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#75

don't want to sound nasty , but is anyone there using nano really ? i know it come by default in some distros but that's about it really.

I use it on some dev servers I can't install software on as an alternative to vi. Otherwise I use emacs+tramp to edit files remotely. It's not a huge use case or most of my editing. Anything to avoid vi though.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#76
post #64
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the courts have already handled cases around the GPL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Leg...

These are about violation of GPL, none of the suits was filed by individual developer who was contributing to the code base. Show me better examples.

> none of the suits was filed by individual developer who was contributing to the code base

(You're not implying otherwise, but this seems like a good place to put this comment.)

An individual developer can bring a case against a distributor violating the GPL if they can prove that their code was involved in the violation.

A good example are the contributors who brought a Linux (kernel) case against VMWare:

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/29/vmware-hearing/

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#77

don't want to sound nasty , but is anyone there using nano really ? i know it come by default in some distros but that's about it really.

I only use it because sometimes vim doesn't work correctly over putty and I can't not verbally swear every time I have to search a vim issue.

Sounds like VT emulation settings in PuTTY might be wrong. There's nothing in vim that PuTTY doesn't support - in fact I've used vim over PuTTY many times.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#78
post #10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it constantly, because I'm quicker making small edits with it than with vim. I would sorely miss it if it's not installed on a server.

I hear this faster for small things but if you use vim I would say I can make changes in a small document twice as fast. They should have a new tag line: Nano the plain text editor for non-Vim maybe EMACS users?

Many many people who need to occasionally edit text in a terminal don't know how to use Vim OR Emacs.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#79

> > As you know, I will not assign my copyright to the FSF, > > nor to anyone else. All the code I write is GPL'ed. > > You don't need to own the copyright on any code in > > order to be able to enforce the GPL. [...] > Indeed, and in fact for a long time the copyright > was owned by me before it was assigned to the FSF. > It's not required per se, but generally speaking, > there must be a Maintainer of the Software…

That's a great summary and an eye-opener on the whole situation. Everything aside, but isn't this FSF enforcement a little too much burden for some? Does it actually change anything? (apart from giving a bad sensation when you hear "now we own the copyright of your work")

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only use it because sometimes vim doesn't work correctly over putty and I can't not verbally swear every time I have to search a vim issue.

Seriously, if you're spending more than a few minutes a week SSH'ing then forget PuTTY, grab yourself a copy of MobaXterm: http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ It's also Pageant aware and will use that as your ssh key agent if you prefer. And vim works properly. We like it so much we pay for the Pro editions.

"Max. 12 sessions Max. 2 SSH tunnels Max. 4 macros Max. 360 seconds for Tftp, Nfs and Cron"

Not open source and heavily limited. Unless you pay for Pro, it's pretty useless...

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