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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

#231

Post by mysidia1 »

cyphar wrote: post #215
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.

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.

SpamAssassin is about as effective as wet scotch tape.

The existence of your e-mail address in public does not grant members of public permission to Republish or use however they please outside its intended purpose.

Community standards say this information is mangled before republishing to the web, Otherwise, if you post someone's e-mail address, you are aiding and abetting spammers.

At the very best, It is highly inconsiderate to republish, and in other cases, may result in legal actionw, as in suit for damages against the person who republished your e-mail address.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#232

Post by cyphar »

synchronise wrote: post #225
cyphar wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the core code (and dissapointingly, btrfs) is GPLv2-only. So rewrites are unlikely, you'd have to ask contributors to update the license. Just do a grep for "at your option", since that's the wording in the copyright header to specify that it's released under GPLv2-or-later, tells me that it isn't that great. It's around 10000 files (Linux has ~50000 files) so it's ~20% of files. This doesn't account for doc…

Was there any specific reason that license was chosen for btrfs that you know of?

My guess is >Oracle. They want to make the minimum possible community contribution.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#233

Post by decode »

jtuente wrote: post #218
cm3 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> US Copyright defaults to the author, it is only with employee contracts/agreements that one can forego the default and assign to the company.

I'm pretty sure this is not true. In fact, it's the opposite of how it actually works. There's an explicit exception in the Copyright Act for a "work made for hire". If you're creating a opyrighted work for an employer, the employer is always the author of the work at the moment of inception.

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#234

Post by belorn »

threeseed wrote: post #222
moloh wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

2001 was when Windows XP was released. That's at least a few "eras" in computing ago. Any open source project is only as good as it is today not what it was.

If you like to test it, I would be very interested in the result of trying to get linux running with only code written from the last 3 years. I would assume that almost a majority of the code would be there, but then I would also assume that most of the essential core is basically untouched except for security patches. It would make for a very interesting read and a HN worthy article.

Have kernel images doubled in the last years?

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#235

Post by snowwrestler »

cyphar wrote: post #212
snowwrestler wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" refer…

Well a license is just a form of contract. In particular, a license is only valid for the term of the licensing contract--once the term expires, so does the license. This permits the licensor to compel the licensee to comply with conditions during the term of the contract. If they don't, the contract is violated and the license is withdrawn.

Copyright assignment is more like a sales contract (at least in the U.S.). It doesn't have a term, but rather is complete once executed. Once it's executed, the new property owner can do what they want with the property. This makes it hard for the seller to compel the buyer to comply with conditions once the sale is done. Like selling a car to someone and saying "if you buy this car you can't drive it to to Texas." Once it's titled in their name, they can drive it wherever they want.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#236

Post by cyphar »

synchronise wrote: post #221
cyphar wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Out of curiosity, how much code is actually GPLv2 only, and how hard would it be to replace those sections with code that was GPLv2+?

Note: I just realised that I licensed kernel/cgroup_pids.c under GPLv2-only. which is wrong. I've sent a patch that also includes a fix to that header.

http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=146673699017938&w=2

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#237

Post by cyphar »

snowwrestler wrote: post #235
cyphar wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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" refer…

Well a license is just a form of contract. In particular, a license is only valid for the term of the licensing contract--once the term expires, so does the license. This permits the licensor to compel the licensee to comply with conditions during the term of the contract. If they don't, the contract is violated and the license is withdrawn. Copyright assignment is more like a sales contract (at least in the U.S.). I…

> Well a license is just a form of contract

Free software licenses (and some proprietary software licenses) are not contracts in any meaningful way. They do not require any of the tests of contract law (meeting of minds, bystander, willingness to be bound, etc) and are implicit agreements (to be fair, contracts can also be implicit but that's not what people are talking about when they say "contracts"). The reason you have to obey the GPL is because the only way you can do anything with the software is by obeying the terms of the license (assuming it's not dual-licensed). That doesn't smell or sound like a contract to me.

> Copyright assignment is more like a sales contract

Except free software copyright assignment gives you non-exclusive rights to licensing anyway (so you only lose the power to sue people, which is not something that software developers do regularly). In addition if you sign a contract to buy a car under the condition that you will drive it to Texas and you don't drive it to Texas, then the contract is voided. Same with houses, or anything else you could possibly sell.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#238

Post by tracker1 »

cm3 wrote: post #226
tracker1 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you mean striking through some sections in contracts too, but wouldn't you have to do it in both copies to have some level of confidence? I cannot imagine you can do this with, say, an ISP contract where you don't agree with some clause. In the past I've had contracts reprinted after pointing out errors in them.

If it's got my physical signature on it, I've blacked/crossed out the offending sections... recently, even an "online" contract had the option to blackout portions, which I thought was a pretty cool feature.

So, yes, if it's a copy with my signature, it has the offending pieces crossed out.

Re: Nano is no longer a GNU project

#239

Post by laughinghan »

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…

The most prominent claim in your comment is that Benno forked the project "with hostility" by updating the official GNU Nano website. Can you explain why you consider nano-editor.org to officially "belong" to GNU? Chris Allegretta, whom you call the current maintainer, has gone on record saying he's the one who changed the website, and that Benno did not take over the website in a hostile way: http://www.asty.org/2016/06/23/whats-up-with-nano/
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