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GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

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Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#51

Post by icebraining »

__david__ wrote: post #47
marcoamorales wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do overlap, but Open Source Initiative doesn't care at all about users' freedoms, which I personally believe to be very important.

Agreed, but it's sad because "Open Source" is a better name than "Free Software" since, unless they are familiar with GNU already, most people are going to interpret it as "software that doesn't cost anything" which couldn't be further from the point.

Well, Open Source is often used to describe code that can be viewed but not modified or redistributed, while the OSI definition includes those as requirements for a license to be considered "Open Source".

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#52

Post by rhizome »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #35
Jare wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Open source can be described as a marketing campaign to convince people who don't care about free software to produce/accept it On the other hand, Free Software can be described as an attempt by certain fanatics to hijack the idea of open source code sharing, in order to advance their own ideals.

Sure, you could frame it that. However, the historical timeline of both of those terms (in that FS was coined long before OS) would suggest that your interpretation may not be the best one. That being said, I am certainly aware of the many, many practical difficulties with the GPL, but that doesn't stop it being one of the best (IMO, of course) events in software in the last thirty years.

Not only that, but nobody ever addresses the perhaps-strawmanned assertion that what the GPL does should be easy. That is, why the practical difficulties of the GPL constitute a negative, i.e. the "bug vs. feature" argument.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#53

Post by bonzini »

vsbuffalo wrote: post #21

I really like the elephant and gazelle argument. I am a huge emacs proponent and I love using it, but I feel like it need to be forked and gutted. The whole beauty of an extensible editor is that extensions should be optional. Including more shit each release is not justifiable.

That was not a technical argument (slow, etc.)

It's about the structure of the project.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#54

Post by justincormack »

nullc wrote: post #42
peripetylabs wrote: post #23

Copyright assignment is impractical, and a great way to eliminate outside contributions to a project.

But the polar opposite where companies like qualcomm are aggressively patenting techniques their employees 'contribute' to LLVM/CLANG with nary a suggestion of offering licensing that makes it lawful for anyone to use... thats okay? What the FSF does has its costs and limitations, but when the mobile patent war spreads to LLVM and renders it unusable except in the underground and by a few large patent mongers, we'll…

Well the Apache license protects against that too.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#55

Post by bonzini »

dfc wrote: post #16

I have been a FSF supporter for a very long time. That being said I have never understood why the gnu-prog-discuss mailing list is so secretive. I can understand having restrictions on posting but I have bever heard a good argument for keeping the discussions behind closed doors. I do not think SPI has any cabalistic mailing lists.

It's secretive because "GNU is not about openness".

I personally believe it's okay to have a "cabalistic" mailing list, the problems are: 1) that the open mailing lists (bug-standards, gnu-system-discuss) are basically unused; 2) that rms is trying to make some topics (e.g., discussing if something could be used as a GPL loophole) taboo even for gnu-prog-discuss.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#56

Post by dlitz »

Jare wrote: post #29
btilly wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the open source movement overlap quite heavily with the ideals of free software? Not really. Open source can be described as a marketing campaign to convince people who don't care about free software to produce/accept it. The catch is that the people who are most attracted to that marketing campaign are attracted precisely because they do not care about free software ideals. Even worse, when you're motivated…

> Open source can be described as a marketing campaign to convince people who don't care about free software to produce/accept it On the other hand, Free Software can be described as an attempt by certain fanatics to hijack the idea of open source code sharing, in order to advance their own ideals.

Yeah, but that's not what actually happened. "Free software" and "open source" are terms whose etymologies are fairly well documented, and many of us remember when and why they were coined. The term, "open source" in particular (as applied to software) was coined in 1998 to market free software to the types of businesspeople who equated "free" with "cheap, crappy, etc".

There's a documentary on YouTube that does a reasonably good job of telling the story of how and why this happened, including the conflicts between the various factions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjaC8Pq9-V0

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#57

Post by cmccabe »

icebraining wrote: post #51
__david__ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but it's sad because "Open Source" is a better name than "Free Software" since, unless they are familiar with GNU already, most people are going to interpret it as "software that doesn't cost anything" which couldn't be further from the point.

Well, Open Source is often used to describe code that can be viewed but not modified or redistributed, while the OSI definition includes those as requirements for a license to be considered "Open Source".

Nobody uses "open source" that way except for certain companies that are deliberately trying to create confusion. They would do so no matter what terminology was used.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#58

Post by jlgreco »

dietrichepp wrote: post #28
dfc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gnome is the new GNU" I have heard this before but never really understood what it was supposed to convey? Is this statement purely from a technical viewpoint? Has Gnome done a lot of work with licensing and activism that I have not heard about?

I didn't make the comment, but I interpret it this way. In the past, if you were on a Unix-like system and wanted a nicer interface, you could install GNU tools. You got nifty things like ls and grep that color their output, a tar that works correctly, etc. Today, if you are on a Unix-like system and want a nicer interface, you install the Gnome shell. Never mind that it's not what everyone wants (bah Gnome 2 is bett…

Gnome might get you something roughly comparable to Apple/Microsoft/etc, but without the GNU tools there is really no technical reason to prefer Gnome to Apple/Microsoft/etc.

Sure you could use NetBSD's userland instead of GNU, or BusyBox, or any other number of alternative userlands, but who actually does that? BusyBox is very popular, but only in all of the places that Gnome definitely is not.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#59

Post by cmccabe »

I wonder if his copyright assignment agreement also covered the assignment of trademarks. The name of the project, which seems to be the thing under dispute, would certainly fall under that umbrella rather than copyright law. On the other hand, GNU might have a pretty strong case that including the word "GNU" in the name without being actually affiliated with them would be misleading.

I have to say, cases like this really point out the flaws in copyright assignment. It just doesn't make sense from a developer's perspective. If you put in the work to create the code, why would you allow someone else to control the licensing and the name? With proprietary software, the reason is clear-- in exchange for money. But with open source or free software, you really have nothing to gain from copyright assignment, and a lot to lose.

If you disagree with whatever the GPLv4 ends up being (or v5, or v6...), your only option is to fork the codebase and choose a new name. Experience has shown that renaming the project loses most of the userbase (think OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice.) This just isn't right. Developers should have a say in how their code is used-- they should be consulted when the code is going to be relicensed.

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