Re: [Savannah-dev] New Developer

[Roland Mas]

Mathieu Roy (2002-08-02 14:01:04 +0200) :

> But I do not play the game of the ones who do not play the game of
> free software.  If someday Microsoft, Apple, or whatever
> proprietary-software company, publish an old version of one of their
> softwares as free software, I'm fine with the idea of using
> it... and starting a free version from this one.

That's excatly what we're doing for Debian-SF.

> But I will never wait the day this company release a more recent
> version of their software under a free license. If a software is
> free, is development should be.  With the development model now used
> by VA Software, users does only have the right to be the slave of VA
> Software plans, as it is for any other proprietary software. But
> there's one way to get out of this crappy situation: start a project
> starting from the latest GPL-released version.

  Again, that's what we're doing (on both SF2.5 and SF2.6).  If SF2.7
is released, we'll consider it.  Otherwise, we won't.  We're not
*expecting* anything.  It's cool if it comes, but it doesn't matter if
it doesn't.  GPL sounds like thermodynamics, only the other way round:
we can win, but we can't lose.

> Also, I'll never help development of a proprietary software hoping
> that, someday, he becomes free.

  We don't do that either.  We maintain free software (SF2.5 and
SF2.6).  The proprietary versions have nothing to do with us.

> But the Free Software community should not be dependant of this
> company. 

  We are not dependent on them.  If they give, we take.  If they
don't, we make.

> So I do not recommand standing using a product that does not evolve
> as free software but as proprietary.  I do not tell to people to use
> a software unmaintained as free software.

  SF2.5 and SF2.6 are maintained as free software.  By me, and
Christian, and Soon-Son, and others.  We put work into that, and we're
starting to be able to trust the results of our work.  Therefore,
we're recommending the use of the results of our work (rather than the
use of the unmaintained code).

  Debian-SF (2.5 and 2.6) is a fork of the original Sourceforge code.
It's maintained.  It's free.  It's supported.  It works now.  Just
like Savannah.

  This post might seem a bit aggressive, but yours sounded like you
were implying that I should stop recommending the use of Debian-SF, or
that you consider Debian-SF to be proprietary or unmaintained, or that
we help the development of the proprietary software, or that we're
dependent on them.  If you were not implying it, or if you were
implying it based on inaccurate info (I hope I have fixed that),
please accept my apologies.

Roland.
-- 
Roland Mas

Qu'est-ce qui est jaune, qui pèse deux cents kilos et qui chante ?
Un sumotori dans sa salle de bains.