Re: [XBoard-devel] Installer

[Eric Mullins]

h.g. muller wrote:
> At 06:53 24-8-2009 -0600, Eric Mullins wrote:
> > This is it in a nutshell: I discovered we are bundling extras for 
> > which we can't just do anything we want with.  That's my main 
> > concern, but it also led me down a path of questioning the wisdom of 
> > bundling anything at all, even stuff we can do what we want with.
> >
> > I'm not concerned with file sizes.  I never once mentioned that as an 
> > issue.
>
> Oh, I must have misunderstood then what you meant by "relatively small 
> install file". Perhaps you meant small functionality...
>
> > Now that I think of it, I like this a lot.  Make winboard basically 
> standalone and thus a relatively small install file.

I don't care about filesizes.  You did misunderstand that-- perhaps it 
was my fault for not being clear.

> As I said, we can do both, one doesn't have to exclude the other. We 
> seem to have different priorities:
> You say: if some important enhancement of functionality could not be 
> stored in git, we should not provide the functionality.
> I would in that case say: then we don't store it it git.
> My aim is to provide functionality to WinBoard users. Not to increase 
> usage of git.
>
> Fortunately there currently don't seem to be important problems in 
> this respect. I am pretty sure that most people who
> gave permission to distribute their stuff would not mind at all if it 
> is also downloadable from the git repository.

That they give permission for git use isn't the point (and they haven't 
yet anyway.  BTW, do we have anything in writing from these sources, and 
what about the new images that are part of the program for variants, 
etc.).  It's that we even need to obtain permission at all.  These files 
are not freely distributable.  Why is it hard to understand the inherent 
problem with that for this project?

I don't see the problem with simply having the bundling occur by a 3rd 
party.  In this case, you, but in a capacity outside of the winboard 
project.  Or anyone else.  I think it's something to be encouraged, 
actually.  But again, not as part of the project.

> In fact most of the stuff we do include is GPL's or has even less 
> restrictions (open-source freeware). Much of what is
> closed source is actually my own. [...]

You don't see a conflict of interest there?  I do.  Again, I bring up my 
point which you ignored about bundling being analogous to Microsoft 
bundling IE.

> That leaves only Pulsar. Perhaps Sjeng would have been a better 
> choice. (Except
> that it doesn't play Atomic, and I really like Atomic most of all ICC 
> variants.) But Mike Adams (Pulsar author) was very
> helpful in debugging WB in combination with all the weird variants 
> Pulsar plays, and is actually eager to see it
> optionally distributed with WB. Pulsar is not very big, it is just a 
> tiny add-on that provides a lot of FUNctionality for
> the more casual board-game enthusiast.