Re: [Nano-devel] how about merge with alpine-pico?

[Chris Allegretta]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2008 at 12:35:54AM +0800, ????????? wrote:
> It is Chris' own wish that one day UW would change their license, as
> written in the FAQ many many year ago, that he accepts the project merge
> with pine if UW changes their license. Do we need two pico-style editors
> because one of them is not free? Yes. Now both are free, does the world
> need two free software pico-style editors? No. 

I think the argument isn't quite this simple.  Do we need innumerable 
GNU/Linux distributions, or 3+ separate forks of BSD Unix?  Strictly, 
speaking, no; in fact there is not even usually a license change in 
these variants.  Practically speaking though, yes.  End users are very 
picky, and the ones with ambition and development skill do not 
hesitate to build something that better meets their needs.  There is no 
harm in that; if anything I think all Free Software projects are 
stronger because of that.

Your argument assumes there are not substantial code differences in the 
projects.  Since Nano was written fron scratch using the Pico interface 
as a black box to emulate it (and some cases breaking compatibility with 
it anyway), it's highly unlikely there are modifications which could be 
made to one code base to make it compatible with the other.

> A very small percentage
> people might need a GPL version of pico, these are people who might
> think every software should have a GPL version if it didn't born that
> way.

I think this is a pretty odd argument, since you are talking to a group 
of developers who implemented an entirely new  editor simply primarily 
because of the license of the original.  The GPL and Apache license are 
both fine in their own regard, but I dont know how mixing code from 
these two licenses would work, even if the above code bridge issue did 
not exist.

> It can be a merge that pico simply joins the alpine project (could be
> difficult because of copyright issue, both organization in history
> showed their strength in not easily compromise), or alpine abandon the
> idea of having their own editor, in turn depends on gnu nano (not a
> shame! There are far too many software depends on gnu stuff) and provide
> patch to nano to cope with their new requirements.
> 
> I knew a typical reply would say that it's the user's decision if they
> configure alpine to use nano as default editor, which is in fact saying
> "that's none of our business". Such reply is not a reply to the point I
> am talking. I am talking about co-operation and make full use of
> resource, reputation here; I am not talking about competition. 'Let user
> decide' would make sense for competiting projects, but do we have a
> reason to compete over to co-operate? If you allowe me to, I'd also wish
> to try communicate with alpine to see their opinion. They knew their
> product pico lagged behind during these years of development and might
> be open to new ideas on bring more to end users.

It's not like the PINE developers could not reimplement what nano was 
doing in the equivalent method for their own editor; they chose not to 
do so.  I think there is likely a bigger issue here.  Do talk to the 
alpine team, but I would not expect a sudden 'all changes welcome' 
attitude in the response .  U of W was notorious for ignoring patches 
and end user feature requests, and just changing the license will not 
change that.  Maybe that's change along with the license; I certainly 
hope it has.

Anyway, I think the PINE and nano project havs had, and still do have 
different end goals for their software.  PINE aims to be an MUA (and 
succeeds at that) and it happens to have a text editor which goes along 
with it.  Nano's end to end goal is to be a text editor with a hopefully
broader appear due to its feature set.  I think both are successes, and 
merging may not make sense in either the short or long term.

In closing, if the license issue could be resolved, and somehow 
codebases cold be merged or (even more unlikely) if U of W wanted to 
throw out pico and maintain and integrate nano, I think there might be 
some interest in assisting with that project.  But I'm not holding my 
breath, 8+ years of waiting will do that for you :)

Chris A
-- 
Chris Allegretta        http://www.asty.org

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