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Nano is no longer a GNU project

nano-editor.org

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Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#111

Post by ArneBab »

dangrossman wrote: post #24

> > 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…

Copyright assignment isn’t actually required by the GNU project. It’s the maintainers choice whether to require it for the specific project or not.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#112

Post by gargravarr »

baldfat wrote: post #99
Already__Taken wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true if you use vim at least once a week forever. Some people don't want to study a manual to change 1 config line. Call me crazy I know.

vim file_foo press i for interactive and make changes then press :wq :) I have that embedded in my brain after all these years.

You forgot ESC after making changes ;)

nano file_foo

make changes

ctrl-O-Enter - save ctrl-X-Enter - exit

Simpler, I think?

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#113

Post by infodroid »

zx2c4 wrote: post #104
mikegerwitz wrote: post #43

I'm on the GNU maintainers team; I want to clarify a couple things about this: First, Nano has _not_ left the GNU project; GNU Nano still does and will continue to exist. The current maintainer of GNU Nano---Chris Allegretta---was hoping to add Benno Schulenberg as a co-maintainer, citing numerous contributions by him. Unfortunately, Benno refused to accept GNU's maintainership agreement, and so was not appointed. Be…

I don't know anything about the politics involved, and I don't even use nano (vim guy myself), but I just ran this out of curiosity: zx2c4@thinkpad ~/nano $ git shortlog -sne --since '3 years ago' 1298 Benno Schulenberg 64 Chris Allegretta 6 Jordi Mallach 3 Mike Frysinger 3 Mike Scalora 2 Rishabh Dave Seems like Benno is clearly the driving force behind the project.

Was it really necessary to also publish their email addresses?

--

Edit: I know the addresses appear in the Git repo. But they are not accessible to web crawlers over HTTP. Most code hosting services require a login to see them as a spam control measure. Which is also why I think they should be obfuscated at least.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#114

Post by ArneBab »

snowwrestler wrote: post #109
davexunit wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>developers don't have to assign copyright to the FSF for it to be an official GNU project This is correct, but it's up to the maintainer to decide if their project will require copyright assignment from all contributors or not. I send patches to a couple of GNU projects, Guile and Guix. Guile requires copyright assignment, Guix does not. Assigning copyright to the FSF is very much unlike assigning copyright to a for…

> Assigning copyright to the FSF is very much unlike assigning copyright to a for-profit company. The terms that you sign and agree to with the FSF are very reasonable and they protect the developer from having the license changed should the FSF be taken over by people that would want to abuse your contributions. This does not comport with my understanding of how copyright works. Once you transfer your copyright to s…

They set conditions (we will keep it free) just like any software contract where you only get the software if you promise to adhere to some rules.

I don’t think the FSF ever violated the condition, so there’s nothing you can do to test whether a court would follow that interpretation.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#115

Post by klakier »

nnutter wrote: post #74
infodroid wrote: post #68

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.

What matters is the way the law sees it.

In most countries law does not `see` GPL. Law sees authorship. And in open source projects the authorship is not clear. You can be 5% author of the code. So be careful what you are doing with the code.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#116

Post by ArneBab »

avar wrote: post #56
davexunit wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>developers don't have to assign copyright to the FSF for it to be an official GNU project This is correct, but it's up to the maintainer to decide if their project will require copyright assignment from all contributors or not. I send patches to a couple of GNU projects, Guile and Guix. Guile requires copyright assignment, Guix does not. Assigning copyright to the FSF is very much unlike assigning copyright to a for…

As I recall the terms include some phrase like "we might change the license to be similar in spirit to the existing one" which gives FSF and anyone who controls it in the future a lot of wiggle room. E.g. the GPL v2 to v3 transition was enabled by that, with the introduction of patent/"TiVo" clauses. No reason they couldn't make more drastic changes in the future.

“similar in spirit” is a pretty strong condition, since there are lots of philosophy texts on the GNU pages which make it clear what “similar in spirit” means. A court would likely rely on these to decide a case.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#117

Post by Programmatic »

tretiy3 wrote: post #35
bechampion wrote: post #2

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 find it very convenient to open large log files bc Nano is very lightweight. Something like that: $ cat /var/log/logfile | grep -n section_start which gives me required line numbers. and then: $ nano +lineno /var/log/logfile and for configs, of course.

I would go straight to vim and type: "/section_start", which navigates straight to that line. Then navigate to the line, "i" to enter insert mode, make edits, and ":wq".

It is absolutely a learning curve, but the power of vim is insane. "dd" deletes lines, "A" appends to the end, "I" inserts at the beginning, "G" jumps to a line number, all little tweaks that I use nearly every day in editing files quickly. It's especially nice when editing known_hosts where it tells you the line of the offending key, just "Gdd:wq" and it's done.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#118

Post by andrewguenther »

infodroid wrote: post #113
zx2c4 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about the politics involved, and I don't even use nano (vim guy myself), but I just ran this out of curiosity: zx2c4@thinkpad ~/nano $ git shortlog -sne --since '3 years ago' 1298 Benno Schulenberg 64 Chris Allegretta 6 Jordi Mallach 3 Mike Frysinger 3 Mike Scalora 2 Rishabh Dave Seems like Benno is clearly the driving force behind the project.

Was it really necessary to also publish their email addresses? -- Edit: I know the addresses appear in the Git repo. But they are not accessible to web crawlers over HTTP. Most code hosting services require a login to see them as a spam control measure. Which is also why I think they should be obfuscated at least.

I mean, they're right there in the git log

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#119

Post by Uberphallus »

infodroid wrote: post #113
zx2c4 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about the politics involved, and I don't even use nano (vim guy myself), but I just ran this out of curiosity: zx2c4@thinkpad ~/nano $ git shortlog -sne --since '3 years ago' 1298 Benno Schulenberg 64 Chris Allegretta 6 Jordi Mallach 3 Mike Frysinger 3 Mike Scalora 2 Rishabh Dave Seems like Benno is clearly the driving force behind the project.

Was it really necessary to also publish their email addresses? -- Edit: I know the addresses appear in the Git repo. But they are not accessible to web crawlers over HTTP. Most code hosting services require a login to see them as a spam control measure. Which is also why I think they should be obfuscated at least.

Publish? It's public already.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#120

Post by cm3 »

infodroid wrote: post #96
bluejekyll wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been struggling with this question as well. If you want to maintain full control of your project, then you want any contributors to assign copyright, because it gives the maintainer the most flexibility. On the other hand, as happened here, it makes people less likely to want to contribute to the project, because they probably feel like they are being taken advantage of or losing some right. A counter argument t…

> it makes people less likely to want to contribute to the project, because they probably feel like they are being taken advantage of or losing some right I think it depends who the copyright is assigned to. I imagine people will have strong reservations about transferring copyright to a private company or individual. But if the copyright is assigned to a mutually trusted organisation like a FLOSS foundation then I c…

> But if the copyright is assigned to a mutually trusted organization like a FLOSS foundation then I can't think of a good reason that a contributor would withhold copyright assignment.

How would one know beforehand what kind of license it will be re-licensed under in the future, and what kind of legal action that assigned copyright holder will take, which you may not agree with? You make valid arguments, but it's not that simple.

As a contributor it's easy to argue that there's no reason for something one contributes under license X to be put under license Y two years later without consent (not required in this case).

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