Now evidence it is public:
After seven and a half million years^W^W^W 0.07 seconds of pondering the question:
Results 1 - 10 of about 17,400,000 for what is the answer to life the universe and everything?. (0.07 seconds)
the answer to life the universe and everything = 42
More about calculator.
And its name is Calculator! Well, who had thought that.
Actually Debian's idea of purity is one of its strong points. The idea of sharing and cooperation, of neighborly help, community, volunteer work and some sort of altruism and spreading these ideas and showing their advantages.
In order to spread these ideas a project must be somewhat successful and Debian is losing more and more grounds here. The users are running over to Ubuntu and the developers are alienated - to check the last point you may follow the links in my OP and check who Joey Hess, Bruce Momsen and Tom Lane are.
Definition from wikipedia:
In modern English it is used to refer to any form of zeal in excess, especially to cases where activism and ambition in relation to an ideology have become excessive to the point of being harmful to others, oneself, and one's own cause.
Debian gets more and more trapped in nit picking discussions about GPL, LGPL, GFDL etc. which outside of the OSS world nobody can follow und thus losing users and developers.
Go back in american history and ask yourself if the concepts of helping each other, sharing and cooperating have been invented by RMS.
Removing support for postgres because that indirectly links to OpenSSL simply is zealotry. It harms the users and is an ivory tower discussion you can't possibly explain to an average human being.
There are two types of OSS developers out there:
* the Linus type "have fun and cooperate" and
* the RMS type "OSS is religion"
You are right. And, when it comes to legal matters, the nitpicking RMS approach wins.
For example, GNU have been requiring paper trails for copyright contributions for decades. Linus didn't bother doing that with Linux, and left Linux wide open to SCO's stupid lawsuit.
Guess what? He learned his lesson and requires a paper trail for contributions now.
Nevertheless there are slightly more people using Linux than Hurd;-) and still going on to use it despite SCO. Your argument is shallow.
If someone wants to sue he will always find a reason.
A small group of people has, it seems, in secret put Debian into a very dangerous legal position, without consulting the people who have the relevent legal expertise.
That is Microsoft-style FUD. If SUN doesn't like what Debain is doing they will simply drop them a note but certainly not sue them. Where is all the common sense gone? SUN is not Microsoft and one can talk to them. They are pretty much involved in OSS too. Ever wondered who brought openoffice to you?
And moreover there is nobody on debian-legal with any relevant legal expertise. I should maybe be renamed debian-ideolgues. It is indeed a big problem that Debian does not have any pragmatic legal expertise free of ideology that it can rely on. One has to understand that law is a non exact field of science - as opposed to source code. Software is deterministic (even race conditions are predictable), law is not. Nobody knows in advance how a court will decide.
Great to see that the Debian developers start to break free from the strangulation of debian-legal and their overly religious OSS zealotry.
It is usually debian-legal who pretends to act "in the name of the user" whereas the opposite is true and explains in large parts the success of Ubuntu.
There are two types of OSS developers out there:
the Linus type "have fun and cooperate" and
the RMS type "OSS is religion"
The group of the relgious people however manages to silence the more pragmatic ones in the name of "higher ideals".
But what is worse is that the concept of meritocracy fails too. Most of the people on debian-legal are no lawyers at all but amidst the blind the one eyed is king - even if color blind and short sighted.
Example from debian-legal of a discussion about postgres:
> What sort of legal advice has Debian consulted that came to a
> different opinion?
There is a sizable pool of people that regularly examine licenses for
Debian, looking for problems. Debian does not regularly consult
practicing attorneys on these issues.
debian-legal
How could the situation be better exposed: "people (without any merits) looking for problems". That's what they are. All developers would reject a mailing list "debian-techadvice" where clueless people could make binding technical decisions, i.e. whether to use gcc 4.0 or 4.1.
One has to go through a notorious process to become a developer but it just needs an email client and a subscription to debian-legal in order to strangle 1500 developers. Time to change Debian back from a supermarket thing to one of the leaders of technology. Congrats Anthony!
Slashdot Mirror
After seven and a half million years^W^W^W 0.07 seconds of pondering the question:
And its name is Calculator! Well, who had thought that.
In order to spread these ideas a project must be somewhat successful and Debian is losing more and more grounds here. The users are running over to Ubuntu and the developers are alienated - to check the last point you may follow the links in my OP and check who Joey Hess, Bruce Momsen and Tom Lane are.
Definition from wikipedia: Debian gets more and more trapped in nit picking discussions about GPL, LGPL, GFDL etc. which outside of the OSS world nobody can follow und thus losing users and developers.
Go back in american history and ask yourself if the concepts of helping each other, sharing and cooperating have been invented by RMS.
Removing support for postgres because that indirectly links to OpenSSL simply is zealotry. It harms the users and is an ivory tower discussion you can't possibly explain to an average human being.
If someone wants to sue he will always find a reason.
And moreover there is nobody on debian-legal with any relevant legal expertise. I should maybe be renamed debian-ideolgues. It is indeed a big problem that Debian does not have any pragmatic legal expertise free of ideology that it can rely on. One has to understand that law is a non exact field of science - as opposed to source code. Software is deterministic (even race conditions are predictable), law is not. Nobody knows in advance how a court will decide.
Cheers.
There are two types of OSS developers out there:
- the Linus type "have fun and cooperate" and
- the RMS type "OSS is religion"
The group of the relgious people however manages to silence the more pragmatic ones in the name of "higher ideals". But what is worse is that the concept of meritocracy fails too. Most of the people on debian-legal are no lawyers at all but amidst the blind the one eyed is king - even if color blind and short sighted.Example from debian-legal of a discussion about postgres: How could the situation be better exposed: "people (without any merits) looking for problems". That's what they are. All developers would reject a mailing list "debian-techadvice" where clueless people could make binding technical decisions, i.e. whether to use gcc 4.0 or 4.1.
One has to go through a notorious process to become a developer but it just needs an email client and a subscription to debian-legal in order to strangle 1500 developers. Time to change Debian back from a supermarket thing to one of the leaders of technology. Congrats Anthony!