[Savannah-hackers] Re: Fighting BitKeeper: There is no such thing as a Free Lunch

[Mathieu Roy]

Shlomi Fish <address@hidden> said:
> >
> > I do not think I can collaborate with someone that consider people at
> > GNU as "bigots". But this is not the first time I read this from you.
> > At http://www.advogato.org/person/shlomif/diary.html?start=93 you said
> > being "afraid to make use of the GNU Savannah Hosting [...] because of
> > their fanatism"
> >
> 
> I do not think people who strictly use only free software are irrational.
> However, I do think that people who try to enforce this policy upon their
> surrounding hackers are. If I don't eat pork - that's perfectly fine. If I
> force anyone in Israel not to eat pork - that's using force.

Can you explain your comparison?

As you answer to a quotation relative to Savannah hosting, I guess
you speak about that (it seems logical).

But if we were serious, as comparison, we only could say something
like "if I host someone in my home, I can expect from him not to
smoke". Is that using force?

> > At http://www.advogato.org/person/shlomif/diary.html?start=33 you
> > also give your point of view on Savannah - really
> > interesting. I'll will not comment this; I already done this.
> >
> 
> I did not use Savannah because it forced all contents of my repository to
> be free software (similarly to what Larry McVoy said with BitKeeper now)
> and because I needed something better than that.

That's your choice. According to the gnu.org content, it should be
really obvious. 

> > You're free to think that taking free software as a political
> > stand is bigotism, fanatism (I personally do not think you really
> > understand the meanings of those words) but as good "Human
> > Engineer" (an expression you seem to appreciate - personally, I do
> > not consider humans as engines) you'll probably understand the
> > fact that any discussion here are related to political matters
> > too, and why it's possible to say here that "BitKeeper [...] is
> > not an alternative" for us.
> >
> 
> BK is not an alternative to you, maybe, but it is an alternative to the
> many free software developers out there, who want to get their work done.
> You can download it, it will work out of the box, you can use the
> bkbits.net service to host it, and you can get support from the
> bitkeeper-users mailing list. By rejecting a hosting of Subversion you are
> simply leaving people no choice but to choose it, despite its
> restrictions.

People have to assume the way they act. I personally sometime use
proprietary software since no free option is out there. For instance,
when I play to Baldur's Gates. But it has really minor consequences,
only on myself. It has no common consequences with usage of non-free
software in software development.

While when you really are end-user, in many case you do not have many
choices, as developer, you have the choice and you define the choice
end-users will have.

And from this perspective, using non-free software is really not an
alternative for people who cares about freedom.

I perfectly understand that people may use BK since they try to be
confined to the technicals aspects. But it's their choice, it does not
depends of us.

It's not because you have no wife that you can rape a girl walking
down the street.

Sure, it would help if free software technically equal to BK was
available to developers, but currently subversion is not stable and
that's it.


> > > Some Savannah users are just looking for hosting for thier projects
> > > and don't care too much about ideals. And some (like me) will
> > > greatly appreciate something better than CVS.
> >
> > "don't care [...] about ideals" -> "something better than CVS".
> >
> > How do you link this two phrases?
> > This confusion seems particulary significative.
> >
> 
> What is the problem?

Easy:
you link the fact that you do not care about ideals with the problem
of technical potential of CVS. Which in no way is linked from our
point of view. We care about ideals; if not, why not just using BK?

> I don't care too much whether I exclusively use free software or
> not, _and_ would like to use something better than CVS to VC my
> projects. I liked BitKeeper when I used it and I like Subversion
> now. I can live with CVS, but I don't like it half as much as I like
> Subversion and very much less than BK.

Finally, you do not get the two important point IMHO:
        - subversion is not stable, according to it's own authors and
          to debian maintainers
        - on gnu.org we care about ideals and you cannot ask us to 
          behave like we dont care.
        

-- 
Mathieu Roy
 
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