Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] The GIF issue

[Loic Dachary]

Miles Lott writes:
 > To me the real issue is in who has control over the project.
 > This is our software, for the moment.  I have no interest in
 > bending over for these powers that would be over this or any
 > 'ethical issue'.

        The interesting thing about the GNU project or the FSF is that
they have no power whatsoever. If they had, they would not experience
so much troubles advocating for Free Software, they would have the
power to impose it. But then, would it be Free Software ? It would
rather be a dictatorship contradictory to the very spirit of Free
Software. 

        The current situation very well shows that the GNU project and
the FSF have no power, no control over phpGroupWare. The phpGroupWare
developers decided to join the GNU project and to comply to its policy
on their own will. They can decide to leave it if, after all, they
are not willing to comply to the GNU project policy. What kind of
power does the GNU project or the FSF have over this ? 

 > If there were a real legal or technical problem then I could
 > understand worrying about it a bit.  Since there isn't, this
 > is only a strongarm attempt to have us exchange our own ethics
 > for someone else's so that we may remain under the umbrella
 > of protection that GNU can provide to shield us against large
 > corporations and other interests taking our code to do with as
 > they please... hmmm....

        This dives into the roots of the GNU policy regarding 
patents and GIF files in particular. When being part of a group,
one can blindly accept its policies or can explore the reasons 
why this policy exists and question it, try to convince the group
that the policy is wrong and arrange for it to be changed. 

        This also holds for the phpGroupWare group of people.  When a
developer joins, he agrees on the phpGroupWare policy for various
things. Now imagine that a developer decides that the policy of
restricting the write access to phpgwapi is a bad policy and opens it
to everyone. He would be facing a similar situation than phpGroupWare
is facing with the GIF boycott the GNU project decided long ago.

        It is likely that such a developer will be told to first
comply to the decision of restricting write access to phpgwapi and
then discuss it. He may have some good ideas to change this policy but
in the meantime he would be requested not to change the situation.  If
he refuses to comply and claims that while discussing the policy
change his own policy should hold, how would phpGroupWare developers
react ? There is a good chance that they all think : this guy decided
on his own to change our policy without our consent, this is
unacceptable.

        I think you can see the parallel between the two situations.
As it turns out the FSF and the GNU project always do their best not
to reject people who violate the GNU policy, not to force them to 
comply to it. Instead, even at the cost of a bad public image, they
ask them to comply to the policy and wait for them to do the change.
Make no mistake : the current situation of phpGroupWare being a GNU
project and contradicting the GIF boycott already is a problem. 
There are people who know the GNU policy of boycotting GIF files,
who know that phpGroupWare is a GNU project and who know that 
phpGroupWare distributes GIF files. As a consequence, all these people
think : the GNU project has an inconsistent policy.

        Despite of this problem, neither the GNU project, nor the FSF
is accusing phpGroupWare of doing damage to the GNU project. Instead
they just ask that you, please, help by complying to the GNU project
policy. In fact this is very close to the php3 compatibility policy
of phpGroupWare. When people do not comply they are asked to, again and
again. And some people are reluctant to it and claim that php4 is enough,
that there is no point supporting php3 anymore, that they won't help
supporting this obsolete version, that php4 legal issues are likely to
be solved in the months to come.

        Cheers,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  address@hidden
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