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Re: Why savannah? (was L4Hurd at Sourceforge)


From: Jeroen Dekkers
Subject: Re: Why savannah? (was L4Hurd at Sourceforge)
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 13:17:14 +0200
User-agent: Mutt/1.3.23i

On Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 10:29:52AM +0200, Niels M?ller wrote:
> Ian Duggan <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Again, can someone please explain to me which parts of Sourceforge are
> > offensive? Which parts aren't free? I just checked, and the full source
> > is downloadable and under the GPL version 2. What isn't free about that?
> 
> I've been staying quiet, hoping that someone who really knows the
> history would explain this. But as nobody else does that, I'll try.
> Please correct me if I have the details wrong.

I don't know the whole history, but I'm going to tell what I know.

> I think there's no big problem, and I don't think sourceforge is
> offensive. As I have understood the situation, some gnu folks have
> looked at sourceforge, and seen that it's a nice thing to have. So
> that moving random GNU packages like gcc, fileutils etc to sourceforge
> started to make sense.

It is offensive for me, see below.

> Now, any conservative person would be a little wary about outsourcing
> his or her source management. And on top of this, I think the company
> running sourceforge stopped being a 100% free software company, i.e.
> they sell proprietary software to some customers sometimes (even if
> sourceforge itself is perfectly free). And the FSF preferres not using
> services from proprietary software companies.

I think the FSF is not going to be dependent on any company. But
savannah was created with the goal: "reduce the workload of
address@hidden to nothing by allowing project maintainers to manage
the membership themselves."
It's at http://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=195

> So savannah.gnu.org was created, as a sourceforge-like home for
> packages that are part of the GNU system. There have been some
> discussion about whether or not non-GNU packages can be hosted at
> savannah.gnu.org, last thing I heard was that they should probably
> not, and perhaps another site like freesoftware.fsf.org should be
> created for that. I don't know if that has happened yet.

There are already a lot of non-GNU packages. The savannah main page
says: "An attempt to register a project that is not part of the GNU
project will also give you the opportunity to apply." Every free
software package is allowed afaik.

> I've also heard of no plans of a complete rewrite of all of the
> sourgeforge code used at savannah.

It's also at http://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=195

> My conclusion is that Official GNU Software should live at savannah.
> For any other free software, using sourceforge is fine. Roland McGrath
> has recommended using the hurd repository at sourceforge for
> "temporary" hurd-related projects (which will move into some savannah
> repository when they stop being temporary).

That was before this announcement:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6954900.html
And, to quote the faq at
http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=6266&group_id=1
"Q. Is SourceForge.net itself going to use SourceForge Open Edition? If
not, why not?

A. SourceForge.net will be using SourceForge Portal Edition, which will
also include proprietary extensions, because it provides functionality
that won't be available in future releases of SourceForge Open Edition.
We'd like to give our SourceForge.net users access to many of the new
features that our enterprise customers will be using, such as the
ability to talk with proprietary databases and other software."

Sourceforge.net _is_ proprietary and I refuse to use that, especially
when there is a free alternative available (savannah).

> > I'm curious, can I get a show of hands from people on this list that are
> > really, really concerned about the "free" thing? I'm not talking about
> > proprietary vs. nonproprietary, but "free as in freedom" vs "free as in
> > beer" vs "open source" vs whatever? I'm interested in understanding what
> > the dynamic of the group is.
> 
> I'm fairly concerned, but I think about the difference between "free"
> and "open" as different marketing strategies. They can be important,
> and debated (in the right forum), but the thing they market is the
> same. (And "free as in beer" is of course neither "free as in freedom"
> nor "open source").

Open source and free software aren't the same. It's explained at
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html, the other
articles at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ are also interesting. I speak
about free software, see http://fsfeurope.org/documents/whyfs.en.html
for reasons.

I don't want to get in religious war here, I just say what my opinion
is. If you have another opinion then I have, I respect that. (If
everybody did that, the world would be a much better place, but that's a
whole different story.)

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
"all the _really_ interesting stuff will be going on in user space."
        --Linus Torvalds
"just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people."
        --Linus Torvalds, "I was never a "big thinker""

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