cardpics, savannah, sourceforge
Loic Dachary
loic at gnu.org
Tue Nov 13 12:41:59 UTC 2001
ymettier at libertysurf.fr writes:
> Hi!
>
> I just read the paper you wrote about the danger on
> sourceforge (http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/article2001-10-
> 20-01.fr.html).
> I currently maintain some projects that are hosted on
> sourceforge (including gtktalog, the others are
> definitely not well known), and the last one I launched
> is cardpics, last week, but on savannah.
>
> There is something not very clear in the article you
> wrote, at least in the french translation I read. Is
> there a short-term danger for free software that is only
> hosted on sourceforge? I mean, is gtktalog (and the
> others projects hosted there) in freedom danger, or the
> problem is just that hosting gtktalog on sourceforge now
> promotes non-free software?
I honestly don't know. The short term danger that everyone
agrees on is that VA {Linux,Software} becomes unable to pay for the
bandwidth and hosting and that sf.net is closed.
I tend to think that being dependent on non free software is
a danger that has high practical implications. I'm happy to use
Debian GNU/Linux because it is 100% Free Software. It is an object
I can share, help grow, adapt, distribute. I'm not happy to use
sf.net because it's not Free Software, it became foreign to the
world in which I leave. In that respect, yes, it threatens the
freedom of projects it hosts because it makes them dependent on
software that gives you no freedom at all.
> In any case, gtktalog2 will be coded from scratch, and
> will be an new project: I won't put it on sourceforge.
> When gtktalog1 was launched, sourceforge had the monopol
> on free soft hosting because it was the only one. Now,
> sourceforge is trying to keep that monopol but there are
> alternatives: I prefer to use them (and the fsf one looks
> promising)
IMHO, what really matters is that someone willing to leave in
a purely Free Software world can do so. I'm that kind of guy and
therefore I don't want to use sf.net. In that spirit, when seeking for
alternatives I would favor those that are based on Free Software and
built in a cooperative way.
I hope this clarifies things a bit,
--
Loic Dachary http://www.dachary.org/ loic at dachary.org
24 av Secretan http://www.senga.org/ loic at senga.org
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