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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

#141

Post by infodroid »

cm3 wrote: post #120
infodroid wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 no…

The whole point is to choose someone that you believe will make appropriate licensing decisions, both now and in the future. And that requires trust in the copyright holder. You cannot perfectly guarantee they will always do the right thing. But the legal structure of the organization can often reduce the risk of that.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#142

Post by cm3 »

ArneBab wrote: post #138
cm3 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if a or the driving force of a project takes things elsewhere, the users will eventually follow. If the disagreement was over GNU's insistence to require assigning copyright to the FSF, then I can fully understand the reluctance. It's the same reason many contributors cannot officially submit patches to side projects of Google employees, Ubuntu projects, etc.

It’s the current maintainer who wants copyright assignment. He does not want to hand over the project to someone who refuses to lead it in a way consistent with his vision. Rather walk more slowly than walk in the wrong direction.

Isn't that even worse then? I mean, the FSF has a good track record and less people would object to assigning copyright over to the org.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#144

Post by cm3 »

infodroid wrote: post #141
cm3 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 no…

The whole point is to choose someone that you believe will make appropriate licensing decisions, both now and in the future. And that requires trust in the copyright holder. You cannot perfectly guarantee they will always do the right thing. But the legal structure of the organization can often reduce the risk of that.

I mostly agree, but unlike other legal agreements, contributing to a project under a FOSS license is not usually coupled with an expiry date after which there's room for radical re-licensing.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#145

Post by jff »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #89
Nursie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, love it. Not as arcane as vim, great for small edits without the oh-crap-what-have-I-pressed-force-quit-start-over phenomenon that I get in vi. 'Serious' editing is done in gedit...

vi makes me angry. This was obvious when I installed Debian on a 1999-era iMac and had to edit (probably) x11 conf and had to use vi with JKL; instead of the arrow keys. It made me want to stab something. nano makes me happy.

> had to use vi with JKL; instead of the arrow keys. It made me want to stab something.

I can see how this would be frustrating, given that the vi movement keys are in fact HJKL

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#146

Post by cm3 »

bluejekyll wrote: post #135
cm3 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 no…

> 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 The problem isn't for the individual contributor, it's the project itself. Let's say for some reason you use Apache 2.0 and then decide you want to add MIT for better compatability with other license. You as the maintainer solicit from all contributors they're approval an…

> What do you do in this case? Go back and remove all their contributions such that you can then continue with the general agreement?

Yes, that's what you do, and it's the same in other industries.

For example, when Erlang/OTP contributors were asked to accept re-licensing under Apache2, a couple patches submitted by Netflix's Rick Reed were reverted prior to re-licensing because they didn't sign off.

The license is for all parties, not just to get contributions and then later do with it what you want. If that's how the project is governed, then the license has to reflect that (GPL3 or later) or a CLA must be in place. When that's clear, it's evident to contributors and many will refuse to contribute.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#147

Post by oftenwrong »

blakesterz wrote: post #94
k__ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use nano, because I didn't "get" Vim.

I hate to admit it, but that's more or less why I do as well. It's not that I don't get ViM, it's just that I don't like it. I have TRIED to force myself to use it. Something about that long reach for the Esc key? I don't know what it is really, but I just never felt comfortable using it. Emacs is such a huge monster of a program. 90% of what it does I never touch. Most of the time I just need to edit a conf file and…

vi was written on an ADM-3A which had its escape key where tab is now typically located.

I remap caps lock to escape.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#148

Post by bonzini »

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.

It says:

5. FSF agrees that any program "based on the Works" offered to the public by FSF or its agents or assignees shall be offered in the form of machine-readable source code, in addition to any other forms of FSF's choosing. However, FSF is free to choose at its convenience the media of distribution for machine-readable source code and may charge a fee of its choosing for copies.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#149

Post by cm3 »

klakier wrote: post #125
cm3 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> none of the suits was filed by individual developer who was contributing to the code base Isn't that what actually happened in the GPL-Violations.org project with netfilter?

It makes me happy to see this. But still I'd advise using developer agreements, if you want the control of the project. And correct license of course!

And it's proof that like Oracle suing Google over 10 lines of code, it's enough for one or more contributors to claim ownership of some (small) part as a basis to take, say, Netgear to court. Thus you don't necessarily need to assign copyright over to a single person or organization.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#150

Post by willnorris »

cm3 wrote: post #47
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…

But if a or the driving force of a project takes things elsewhere, the users will eventually follow. If the disagreement was over GNU's insistence to require assigning copyright to the FSF, then I can fully understand the reluctance. It's the same reason many contributors cannot officially submit patches to side projects of Google employees, Ubuntu projects, etc.

Just to be clear on this, Google projects (including side projects of Google employees) do not require copyright assignment in the way that FSF projects to. They require an explicit copyright license, but the author retains the copyright. Full details at https://cla.developers.google.com/about
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