Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Projects for Android in GNU Savannah

[Alex Fernandez]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 10:04 PM, Tomasz Konojacki <address@hidden> wrote:
> Good question, I was wondering about it too. In my opinion, if Android is 
> free software (its
> source code is publicly released under free license) we should allow projects 
> that are
> depending on it. Of course, I'm not most competent person on earth to speak 
> on this topic. I
> would be happy to read opinion of someone more competent.

I think so too. Speaking as someone interested in the theory (but
certainly not more competent than you!), as long as the dependency is
on the Free software part I don't see how we can reject it based on
our own rules. Sure, Android may need some additions to build a free
phone out of it; but that happens with almost all Free software. Even
the GNU project is not complete and independent as it needs a kernel.

Now, if some piece of software were to depend on the binary drivers,
on the binary apps (such as Google Maps) or any other non-Free
software then it should be rejected here on Savannah. And we should
strive to help with the free versions such as Replicant.

By the way, is it allowed to depend on a gratis web service which is
not Free software, such as the Google Maps API? I know the issue has
come up before but I don't quite remember how it was solved.

Thanks,

Alex.