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Nano is no longer a GNU project

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Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#211

Post by moloh »

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.

Why only 3 years ago?

Maybe 10 years will be little more accurate?

  git shortlog -sne --since '10 years ago'
    1298  Benno Schulenberg 
     481  David Lawrence Ramsey 
     382  Chris Allegretta 
      28  Jordi Mallach 
       3  Mike Frysinger 
       3  Mike Scalora 
       2  Rishabh Dave 

  git shortlog -sne --since '15 years ago'
    2528  David Lawrence Ramsey 
    1298  Benno Schulenberg 
     803  Chris Allegretta 
     355  Jordi Mallach 
       3  Mike Frysinger 
       3  Mike Scalora 
       2  Rishabh Dave 
       1  Rocco Corsi
Well, now looks little different...

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#212

Post by cyphar »

snowwrestler wrote: post #199
cyphar wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contracts and copyright law are wildly different things. It's misleading and incorrect to conflate the two together.

Yes, that's my point--the person I replied to was confusing copyright assignment with buying software, and I am explaining how they are different.

> Software contracts with conditions are license agreements.

That sentence is blatantly false. A contract and a license are different concepts and bound by different laws. That was my point.

In addition, they weren't confused. It looks like you were:

> 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.

"keep it free" refers to freedom (as in they will only ever use free software licenses). In fact the FSF also states they will only ever use licenses that are in the same spirit as the GPLvX. It is a contract, because you are assigning your copyright to them -- you have to have an agreement in place in order to do that. Software licensing is a different thing. The FSF actually requires you to give them your copyrights if you want to contribute some code to a project they manage. Many other projects do not do this, so the structure for things like Linux (and some GNU projects) is different and is based on licensing.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#213

Post by cyphar »

snowwrestler wrote: post #198
davexunit wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It belongs to them now, but under the conditions that I agreed to. So, they have to keep the source free or they will have violated a legally binding agreement with me.

What is the penalty for that violation?

The same penalty as with violation of any other type of contract. They would also lose any rights under that contract because they violated their side of the deal.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#214

Post by cyphar »

Addile wrote: post #194
davexunit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That means that the contributors agreed to license the code as "GPL version 2, or at your option any later version", which means that they are amenable to changes to the GPL. The FSF could not , however, make a GPLv4 that was a proprietary software license or something. I wouldn't have signed copyright assignment forms if that was a possibility. Really, FSF copyright is a very good thing, and you can even do it compl…

And that's where I don't fully agree. There are many projects licenced under "GPL v2 or later" and they don't need copyright assignment. Copyright assignment is huge and opens the door for way too many legal stuff. Also Copyright is a pretty US thing. Law differs and many Countries don't actually allow it. Also since you brought up Getmany already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Germany#Trans... Germa…

The problem is that in order to have the ability to register their copyright and do meaningful enforcement actions in the US, they need copyright assignment. Copyright cares about authorship, so if they don't have "authorship" (read: own the copyright) then they have very little power to enforce the GPL.

Some other people argue it's not necessary, and while that might be true, it's better to be safe than sorry. Not to mention that all GNU projects are GPLv3-or-later anyway (so any contribution would be able to be upgraded anyway since it's licensed in such a way that you can use it under GPLv4). If you refuse and license your change under GPLv3, it won't get merged.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#215

Post by cyphar »

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.

Why is everyone so uptight about their emails being public? If you're planning on doing free software development in public, your email is going to have to be publicly available anyway (otherwise people can't contact your for legitimate reasons). Spend the 15 minutes it takes to set up SpamAssassin and then get on with your life.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#216

Post by cyphar »

klakier wrote: post #130
klakier wrote: 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.

What I meant here, is not that GPL was not tested in court. Just imagine situation of one of the authors saying: I no longer want to see my code on the Internet. Let's say he contributed 30% of the code. Now what? He is the author, he has the right to do it. In most cases developers sign no agreements when their patches are merged.

> I no longer want to see my code on the Internet.

Such a statement doesn't make sense. Not to mention that you can't retroactively un-license something (unless the license has a termination clause). Free software licenses do not have termination clauses (by definition, the FSF won't approve them if they do because it restricts practical freedom). Though I'm fairly sure it would count as an "open source" license under the OSI definition.

> In most cases developers sign no agreements when their patches are merged.

If you submitted code under the DCO, you've signed an affadavit saying that you have the right to license the code and that it is licensed under the license of the project. For copyleft projects, you don't even need that (if you've distributed it then you've implicitly licensed it under the original license). But in either case, once you've licensed you code under some license then you can't terminate that license if it's a free software license.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#217

Post by cyphar »

thomasahle wrote: post #205
nnutter wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

It's possible that this has been 'fixed' with GPL3. I just know Linus used it as a reason not to change the license of the Linux kernel.

Linus explicitly opted out of the "or any later version" clause because he doesn't agree with the ideals of free software (seeing it as more of a practical convenience). All versions of the GPL have had an upgrade clause, mainly so that GNU projects can upgrade the license.

Not to mention that much of the code inside Linux is under GPLv2-or-later, but because some of it is GPLv2-only the whole work is GPLv2-only.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#218

Post by jtuente »

cm3 wrote: post #157
willnorris wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Interesting, thanks for the correction. Reading that page, it appears that this due to US IP ownership agreements for employees. Is that correct? If so, why isn't there an exception for personal-time-only contributions by single developers, or at least those outside a jurisdiction like the US where an employer may own each and all of your ideas and intellectual output? To be clear, I haven't lived or worked in the US…

US Copyright defaults to the author, it is only with employee contracts/agreements that one can forego the default and assign to the company. Something like the google license is there to help with making a clear distinction between google-owned copyright, author-owned copyright and author-owned copyright permanently licensed to google. Meaning that google will never be required to pay any kind of royalties for the author's work even after they leave employment at google.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#219

Post by tracker1 »

cm3 wrote: post #157
willnorris wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Interesting, thanks for the correction. Reading that page, it appears that this due to US IP ownership agreements for employees. Is that correct? If so, why isn't there an exception for personal-time-only contributions by single developers, or at least those outside a jurisdiction like the US where an employer may own each and all of your ideas and intellectual output? To be clear, I haven't lived or worked in the US…

I always line out those sections of employee agreements... Fortunately, haven't had a problem with it yet.

There are separate state laws, iirc such as California, which makes parts of those kinds of provisions void.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#220

Post by profmonocle »

chris_7 wrote: post #152
infodroid wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For whom is spam actually a problem? Filters are absurdly good.

They are, if you can get them. Until recently my employer was using a mail provider that had seriously neglected their product. The spam filtering was atrocious, so I tried to avoid giving out my work email as much as possible.

(Thankfully we finally switched to another provider because the old one refused to support DKIM or even STARTTLS to other MX servers.)

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