[Savannah-hackers] Questions about the rules for Savannah projects

[Stuart Ballard]

I'd like to use Savannah to host the development of a project that I've 
been developing privately for some time. I'll be releasing it under a 
combination of the GNU GPL and the GNU LGPL (GPL for tools, LGPL for 
runtime libraries).

I'm writing to you, rather than just going through the usual "Register 
new project" process, because the project in its current state has some 
dependencies on non-free software. One of the first things I want to do 
after releasing it is to remove these dependencies, but I'd like to set 
up the development on Savannah first, if possible, while I work on 
removing them.

The dependencies should not take long to remove - they are as follows:

- The project is written in Java but has not been tested on any Free 
java environment. The Classpath, gcj and Kaffe projects all provide all 
the APIs that I actually use: eliminating this dependency should be just 
a matter of doing some thorough testing and fixing any incompatibilities 
that turn up.

- The project can (optionally) generate C# output files; these haven't 
been tested on any Free C# implementation. Similarly to the situation 
with Java, this should be just a matter of testing on Mono or DotGNU and 
fixing any incompatibilities. The C# output is optional anyway.

- The project's purpose is for database access, but the only databases 
currently supported are proprietary (Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server). 
Adding support for Free databases such as PostgreSQL or MySQL should be 
essentially trivial for someone who knows the ins and outs of these 
databases. That's one of the reasons I'd like to be on Savannah - while 
I can research a Free database myself and add the support eventually, it 
would be much quicker and easier for somebody who already knows those 
databases well. And the services Savannah provides would make it much 
easier to collaborate with any such person (public mailing lists, public 
CVS repository, etc).

I am a strong believer in Free Software and I don't like having 
dependencies on non-free stuff at all - the non-free DB dependencies 
were forced on me due to external circumstances and the non-free 
language dependencies were only added at all in the knowledge that free 
implementations were becoming available. I recognise your distaste for 
including any non-free dependencies at all on Savannah, but I'd ask if 
you'd consider making Savannah's services available to help *remove* 
these non-free dependencies and produce a useful all-free tool.

(One justification that I can think of for allowing this: you do accept 
projects for which no code at all currently exists; in these cases, 
potential users will get nothing useful if they try to download the 
project. If you like, you can imagine that my project is one for which, 
although a large body of code already exists, the existing code is not 
yet functional. A user with only free software on their system will not 
get anything useful at this point, but the same is true of a project for 
which no code has yet been written...)


Thank you in advance for your consideration, and whatever decision you 
make, I will respect it. If the decision is "no", I'll still work on 
removing the dependencies, and I'd still like to host on Savannah once 
the removal is complete.

Thanks,
Stuart.

--
Stuart Ballard, Programmer
NetReach - Internet Solutions
(215) 283-2300, ext. 126
http://www.netreach.com/