[Savannah-register-public] [task #14370] Submission of melikamp's userland

[melikamp]

Follow-up Comment #6, task #14370 (project administration):

There seems to be a miscommunication of some sort. Is there any chance to have
any other member of the Savannah project to weigh in on this conversation?

Here's my take on the conversation so far.

The very first thing you asserted was that the program does not seem to be
generally useful. As an author, I would be delighted to discuss the program's
usefulness with you, but with two reservations.

First, I wanted to make sure that demonstrating the program's general
usefulness is a requirement for approval. So I posed a this very direct
question to you, but you chose not to give me a straightforward answer along
the lines of yes or no. By now, however, seeing how this usefulness issue
keeps coming up, and the process is at a standstill, I realize that it is a
requirement for approval.

Second, before I spend even a second of my time to discuss the general
usefulness of the program, I would like to be reasonably assured that there
exists an objective test for that, and this test is applied by the Savannah
project in a fair manner to all submissions, and I am not singled out for some
reason. So my very next question was whether such a test was applied to my
project.

For example, rejecting projects smaller than 1000 bytes in size would be an
objective test; or rejecting projects larger than 100 GiB; or rejecting
projects with certain frequency of syntax errors per bytes of code; or
rejecting projects which fail an evaluation by an impartial and blind
committee of recognized experts in the field, although this last scenario is
borderline with respect to both objectivity and fairness.

With your last reply, you declined to provide a description of any such test,
asserting instead that you deem certain parts of the program unacceptable
based entirely on your personal opinion about its general usefulness.

I totally respect your right to have an opinion on how generally useful my
project is, as well as your right to share this opinion in public. However, I
don't see how this opinion can be appropriate within this specific
discussion.

In your last reply you pointed out specific code fragments which, in your
opinion, are problematic, and make the project unacceptable. You clearly
indicated that the acceptance of the project depends on my willingness to
modify the algorithm. For just one example, when you point out the reliance
"on specific paths where packages are installed" as a reason for
disqualification, you tacitly assert that the behavior of this code would have
to be changed. You also started out by saying that this is your opinion.

If what you have done so far had a malicious intent behind it, other by you or
by the project as a whole, it would be called extortion. Assuming ill intent,
with your last post you unequivocally attempted to extort a share of creative
control over the project in exchange for approval. You clearly indicated that
the approval is not happening because the code (specifically, its algorithm)
would have to be altered in accordance with your personal opinion about what
makes a program generally useful.

I am thoroughly convinced at this point in time that there was no ill intent
here, and I am treating this whole thing as a result of miscommunication.

At the same time, I would also be completely satisfied if you told me that the
Savannah project has the official policy whereas they reserve the right to
censor free software projects which fail subjective usefulness tests. I
totally respect the right of any project to demand a share of creative control
over the submissions, I guess I just didn't expect a hosting project would do
it.

I hope you can see why I think we need to get a fresh pair of eyes on this
issue, and I am especially anxious to find out whether the Savannah project
considers it's OK to reject submissions in a manner described in the previous
paragraph.

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