Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] help needed with savannah

[Alex Fernandez]

Hi Mario,

Please don't view my message as an attack of your work as Savannah
admin, I think you are doing a very good job. But I also think that we
could serve the Savannah project better if we improved our means
(including our tooling).

On Sun, Jul 17, 2011 at 7:57 PM, Mario Castelan Castro <address@hidden> wrote:
> "help needed with savannah" in address@hidden
>
>> Depends on what your priorities are. In my view, letting pass 10
>> projects that shouldn't is better than blocking 1 project that should.
>> Likewise, keeping submissions open for an indeterminate amount of time
>> is quite worse than a quick approval or denial. So Mario, I would ask
>> you to not block submissions with lots of philosophical questions
>> about attitude or about the spirit to share, but just stick to facts.
>> [...]
>
> It would be clearer to consider your suggestion in context.  Could you
> please point an example of a project I blocked with lots of
> philosophical questions?.

An example of submission blocked because of the developer's opinions:
  https://savannah.gnu.org/task/?10695
Your message:
  "- From the above I conclude atpic.com don't cares about freedom nor real
sharing because it encourages proprietary licensing and discourages
usage of works whose Copyright is held by third parties."

IMHO, it is not our mission to evaluate the developer's attitude
towards freedom or sharing; we need to assess if the submitted
software respects the four freedoms *with regards to software*.

A submission blocked because one of the libraries imported used the
term "open source":
  https://savannah.gnu.org/task/?10968
The developer's message:
  "I have some delay in catching up with the changes suggested by
Mario because the major changes suggested by Mario was not in my code.
It was with the libraries I used. So I decided to rewrite the whole
program using some other library. I am searching for a strategy to
rewrite the code using some other library with little effort - which
until now is futile. I am also thinking of using jquery directly.
Thats the reason for the delay."

This is not good (again IMHO): a developer should be able to use
whatever libraries they see fit, as long as the libraries respect the
four freedoms; no matter the terminology of the developers.

> We shouldn't neglect the philosophical foundations of free software and
> the GNU project.  I usually *point* philosophical issues, it's not my
> intention to block the project by doing so.

Philosophical issues are fine, but the GNU project is concerned with
software and the four freedoms (to inspect, to modify, to copy and to
distribute modified versions). Many other GNU artifacts have licenses
which restrict freedom, and in fact the GPL is a prime example of
restricting people's freedom -- in order to attain the four freedoms
that the FSF defends. Not to speak about the GFDL: here the developer
has a few limitations with what they can do with the documentation.
The FSF thinks that the compromise between freedom and collaboration
is acceptable.

The key point here is that the philosophical foundations are
debatable, while the four freedoms are not. Either the developers is
fine with you modifying the code and distributing the result, or they
are not. Legal standing is more debatable, but from our developer
point of view the issue should be clear.

>> Allow me to point out two GNU documents which emphasize this point:
>>   http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#VerbatimCopying
>>   http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OpinionLicenses
>>
>> Once we establish that we only need to check facts (can the project be
>> redistributed freely with modifications), things get easier. Facts are
>> easy to machine-check. When time is precious, better solve the issue
>> for the 90% that can be checked automatically (even if it takes a
>> little longer to get there) than go one by one for 100% of projects.
>> You save time in the end.
>
> I don't understand what do you mean.

Please read the links carefully. The GNU project does not promote
modification of those documents it views as pure opinion. Even in the
GNU project itself: the license for GNU web pages does not allow
modifications. Here the GNU project puts some other principles in
front of the right to modify some documents.

My point is that checking for ideological purity is hard to do. But
checking if some piece of software respects the four freedoms and some
other bits of GNU terminology is easier to do automatically, making
our task as admins much easier and more productive. An automatic check
will never be 100% exact, but I prefer to let slip 10 mentions of
"open source" because they are hyphenated than losing one valuable
contributor.

Thanks,

Alex.