[Savannah-hackers] Re: Savannah & non GNU projects

[Loic Dachary]

Richard Stallman writes:

 > Could you tell me what you have seen in these ten cases?  How did
 > these projects end up as non-GNU?  What did their developers think of
 > the possibility of making the package a GNU package?

        There is one good example. A project including a DocBook
manual was submitted. It wanted to become part of the GNU project. I
accepted it as non GNU and then we discussed various points to prepare
it for the evaluation process. I have the feeling that the author
would have been less responsive if the hosting was not accepted first.
Of course there is no way to be sure of this. Maybe this guy was
motivated anyway and refusing the hosting of his project until it
applies would not have been an obstacle for him.

        I see another advantage in hosting projects that are non GNU.
It allows projects that are in the process of evaluation to benefit from
the infrastructure and continue to work while waiting for the evaluation
process to finish. Since it takes a long time they are less likely to
give up.

        Since the projects accepted already are only two weeks old, it's
a bit early to draw conclusions but I'll summarize the situation fully in
another mail.

        Although I could not prove it by reasoning I have the feeling
that hosting non GNU projects will raise the number of applications
to the GNU evaluation team significantly. My intuition is essentially
based on the fact that someone is more likely to be interested by 
a project that is close to him. And being on Savannah make Free
Software projects close to the GNU project. Information on the free
software philosophy or the GNU project goals are only one click away.

        Cheers,

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