Re: [O] BeOrg

[Tim Cross]

Bottom line is that referencing this software in the org manual would
contravene the GNU guidelines and underlying philosophy of the
GPL. While you will find references to non-GPL software/platforms, these
are not references which promote non-free solutions, but references in
support of adopting free solutions on non-free platforms.

One of the biggest threats to software freedom and a significant issue
for the FSF is the attractive lure of convenience. I feel it would be a
mistake to ignore the guidelines in favour of promoting a non-free
solution on the basis it would be beneficial to users. The FSF and GPL
are built on a clear philosophy of supporting and promoting software
freedom and to sacrifice those principals because there is only a
non-free solution to satisfy a need is short sighted and
contradictory.

It appears the software is actually free to download and has an 'in app'
donation request. It also appears the software makes extensive use of
other 3rd party libraries. This makes me wonder if it would be
reasonable to contact the author and ask if they would be prepared to
change the license to an acceptable open source one. This would not
prevent them from continuing to request donations and would then enable
Org to reference the software on the org site and in the manual, which
would in turn likely increase app visibility and lead to more donations
to the author. This could be a win for everyone, including the author.

Of course, the other question to ask is "If beorg is so much better than
available open source equivalents, such as mobileOrg, how has one
individual  been able to do that when the org community cannot?"

Tim

Ilya Shlyakhter <address@hidden> writes:

> The org features page at https://orgmode.org/features.html, and the
> Org manual, mention MobileOrg, but not the newer BeOrg app
> ( http://beorgapp.com/ ).  Maybe add a reference to it?


--
Tim Cross