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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

#91

Post by bonzini »

ohnoohno wrote: post #76

My view: sed does not need to be "extended" nor should it require much maintenance. At least, the BSD sed's I use have not needed much work. I recall Brian Kernighan mentioning how little maintenance awk has required over the years. As such, I fail to see why changing maintainers is newsworthy. Perhaps someone was looking for an excuse to state their opinions on other matters? I'll be honest I could not understand wh…

Just as an example of extending sed, I introduced "sed -i".

Yes, it doesn't require much maintenance, but sometimes you can be surprised. I started maintaining GNU grep 3 years ago because it was in a really sorry state. Some parts were almost rewritten to make it faster and more correct.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#92

Post by belorn »

rogerwilco wrote: post #77
dasht wrote: post #61

For a time I too was the maintainer for GNU sed. Part of that time I was paid by the FSF for that work (this was a long time ago, when the FSF had a small staff working directly on the Hurd and GNU). When I started, GNU sed was very incompatible with the relatively new Posix standard for sed. When I finished, it was less incompatible. It was during this same time that I started work on a new regexp engine for sed but…

What does it even mean for an OS to be "complete"? That no further work remains to be done on it? I wouldn't call that "complete"; I'd call it dead. A state that, not coincidentally, a lot of GNU projects have reached over the years-- Hurd among them. And now it looks like GNU sed has arrived there too. It's this attitude that you have to be the only one in charge of everything, the only one doing anything or being c…

Are you trying that old "who is more freeest, GPL/FSF vs apache" thing? Seriously, its getting so old that it start to be a pain to answer it.

The world is not so simple that either you have total freedom to do anything, or you have complete locked down control of everything. Some freedom is about maintaining others freedom with the use of restrictions. The most common ones are "you must not kill, you must not steal". Those two are social control, but with the goal and effect of more freedom. That's not poison that kills life, rather that is protection preserving life.

Having products, be that a phone, a book reader, or a browser that users buy, this same users will think that they are the owner of it and thus in control. If then by technical means someone else actually has the complete control over the thing, that it is at least morally wrong, if not something that should simply be illegal.

To take an example, if my browser suddenly got infected with spyware and disabled ad-block, I would get angry and consider that the people behind said spyware should go to jail. If my browser suddenly got pushed with a remote update which by it's developer decision permanent disabled ad-block, I should be completely accepting of it? If Firefox did this, they would get forked as by MPL. If Firefox was proprietary software, no such thing could happen.

A foundation that say clear No to giving the developer control as if they had property owership of my phone, my book reader, my browser, is not a foundation about political, social, and technological control. Its about ensuring political, social, and technological freedom by restricting behavior that would normally be considered illegal and immoral if done outside the domain of IT.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#93

Post by tonfa »

bonzini wrote: post #55
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.

> 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.

Might not be a bad idea, since those discussions could be used after discovery as part of a trial.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#94

Post by belorn »

DannyBee wrote: post #67
bjourne wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people would stop parroting that stupid lie. RMS is curently heavily involved in GNU Emacs development and has been for many years. Just check the mailing list sometime.

Yes, where he has, for example, refused to allow emacs to use any sane bug tracking system because it would interfere with his workflow, despite the fact that he's not the only developer.

Its all code. If a group want a bug tracker system X, and a second group want bug tracker system Y, then build a middle layer system that converts information back and forth from X Y.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#95

Post by belorn »

tonfa wrote: post #93
bonzini wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Might not be a bad idea, since those discussions could be used after discovery as part of a trial.

If the problem is the discussion about loopholes, than why not just create a second mailing list about that topic and leave the other ones open?

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#96

Post by munchor »

vacri wrote: post #89
dasht wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that RH and Canonical are very problematic for the community. They are a mixed bag containing a lot of good, but also containing some critical problems (for the cause of freedom). So I like to speak frankly about those problems, when I can.

Why not point out viable alternatives while making the criticisms of those two? Debian has a pedigree of broad, long-term professional use and is 100% free in both senses (barring a couple of firmware binaries in the 'speech' sense).

Is Debian really 100% free? The Linux Kernel itself isn't 100% free, it has proprietary blobs. Sure, they can be removed, but I don't think Debian removes them by the default.

Anyways, I do agree that Debian should be the distribution the FSF should support instead of gNewSense.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#97

Post by rimantas »

chimeracoder wrote: post #66
yxhuvud wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but you cannot have both the cake and eat it. You either have to compromise on users or on developers. GPL license writers choose not to compromise on users by enforcing that modifications are contributed back. BSD license writers choose not to compromise on developers by allowing developers to use the code as they see fit, no strings attached. These are not compatible. There are either strings attached as in G…

> You either have to compromise on users or on developers. Developers are users. > There are either strings attached as in GPL or there are not, as in BSD. From the way you're phrasing this, it's clear you miss the free software paradigm altogether. There are no strings attached. The ability for some users to limit other users' freedoms isn't one of the four freedoms.

Well, you not counting something I want to do with code as freedom does not make it less of a freedom. That, and also, that by limiting my ability to limit other users' freedom you are in fact limiting my own freedom: I may not use your code licensed that way. That's way I go with MIT, BSD, whatever, and leave GPL folks to play their hypocritical games with semantics, definitions and freedoms.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#98

Post by mrud »

munchor wrote: post #96
vacri wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not point out viable alternatives while making the criticisms of those two? Debian has a pedigree of broad, long-term professional use and is 100% free in both senses (barring a couple of firmware binaries in the 'speech' sense).

Is Debian really 100% free? The Linux Kernel itself isn't 100% free, it has proprietary blobs. Sure, they can be removed, but I don't think Debian removes them by the default. Anyways, I do agree that Debian should be the distribution the FSF should support instead of gNewSense.

Debian does remove them by default. One of the problems FSF has is with the contrib and non-free repositories

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#99

Post by rwmj »

dasht wrote: post #68
yuhong wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

proprietary OS products?

Their users are, de facto, locked into a few vendors who, because of this arrangement, can charge excessive rent. In part this is because of a tiny number of critical components that do not have libre licenses; in part it is because these vendors provide technical leadership to the larger community in forms that actively prevent organizing a truly libre OS.

Which components are you talking about? Firmware?

Given suitable hardware that doesn't need firmware blobs, distros like Fedora are 100% free software. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is also 100% free - you can download all the source from ftp.redhat.com and check that yourself.

Re: GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

#100

Post by vacri »

mrud wrote: post #98
munchor wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Debian really 100% free? The Linux Kernel itself isn't 100% free, it has proprietary blobs. Sure, they can be removed, but I don't think Debian removes them by the default. Anyways, I do agree that Debian should be the distribution the FSF should support instead of gNewSense.

Debian does remove them by default. One of the problems FSF has is with the contrib and non-free repositories

It's interesting to see that in the gnewsense wikipedia page that Debian considers some of the GNU documentation to be non-free because their license allows an author to say "you are not allowed to modify this part of the manual", which is somewhat against the spirit of the FSF's opinion on code.
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