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I'm on the GNU maintainers team; I want to clarify a couple things about this: First, Nano has _not_ left the GNU project; GNU Nano still does and will continu

I'm on the GNU maintainers team; I want to clarify a couple things about this: First, Nano has _not_ left the GNU project; GNU Nano still does and will continue to exist. The current maintainer of GNU Nano---Chris Allegretta---was hoping to add Benno Schulenberg as a co-maintainer, citing numerous contributions by him. Unfortunately, Benno refused to accept GNU's maintainership agreement, and so was not appointed. Benno also did not want to assign copyright to the FSF for his contributions. Instead, it seems, Benno decided to fork the project. But he did so with hostility: he updated the official GNU Nano website, rather than creating a website for the fork. It's early, so there's still discussion going on, but again, to be clear: GNU Nano has absolutely not left GNU.

cm3 10y ago
But if a or the driving force of a project takes things elsewhere, the users will eventually follow. If the disagreement was over GNU's insistence to require assigning copyright to the FSF, then I can fully understand the reluctance. It's the same reason many contributors cannot officially submit patches to side projects of Google employees, Ubuntu projects, etc.
- klakier 10y ago
  Do you know that according to copy rights, open source projects are mess. Nobody tried it in the court, but if some developer contributing to project went to court saying "This part of code is mine, I don't want it to be modified by other people", then the project could be in trouble. Nobody tried that (yet). That's why some OS projects require signing Developer Certificates of Origin etc.
  - adrianN 10y ago
    No, the courts have already handled cases around the GPL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Legal_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Leg...
    - klakier 10y ago
      These are about violation of GPL, none of the suits was filed by individual developer who was contributing to the code base. Show me better examples.
      - mikegerwitz 10y ago
        > none of the suits was filed by individual developer who was contributing to the code base (You're not implying otherwise, but this seems like a good place to put this comment.) An individual developer can bring a case against a distributor violating the GPL if they can prove that their code was involved in the violation. A good example are the contributors who brought a Linux (kernel) case against VMWare: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/29/vmware-hearing/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/29/vmware-hearing/
      - cm3 10y ago
        > none of the suits was filed by individual developer who was contributing to the code base Isn't that what actually happened in the GPL-Violations.org project with netfilter?
        klakier 10y ago
        It makes me happy to see this. But still I'd advise using developer agreements, if you want the control of the project. And correct license of course!
        cm3 10y ago
        And it's proof that like Oracle suing Google over 10 lines of code, it's enough for one or more contributors to claim ownership of some (small) part as a basis to take, say, Netgear to court. Thus you don't necessarily need to assign copyright over to a single person or organization.
  - infodroid 10y ago
    The way I see it, if you contribute to a project for example by sending a patch to it by email or pull request then you agree to be bound by the license. Even if there is no copyright assignment. Otherwise you would not have the right to modify the software to write your patch in the first place. This just seems like common sense to me.
    - thomasahle 10y ago
      The problem is if the maintainer wants to change the license (Like GPL2 -> GPL3). That's only possible if the contributors have signed over copyright, or the maintainer can track down every person who ever sent a patch, and get them to agree.
      - nnutter 10y ago
        I don't think GPL2 -> GPL3 is a valid example of that. Usually it is to dual-license with a non-open-source license or some other incompatible open-source licenses. The GPL "upgrade" clause, > Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
        bluejekyll 10y ago
        I think you missed the if clause: > If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", I'm no lawyer, but I think the source has to mention that explicitly. So it's not true of ALL gpl projects. In this case though you are right because nano, it appears, specifies it's license as: > License: GNU General Public License v3 or later So, while true in this case it's not always true (see Linux kernel license, GPLv2, no upgrade).
        cyphar 10y ago
        Most GPL projects do this. I don't have access to my box, but if you did a search for licenses you'd find many use "or later" (and in fact a lot of code within Linux uses "or later" as well). So practically it's a very common upgrade path. And some people will actually email every contributor to ask to relicense the code.
  - klakier 10y ago
    What I meant here, is not that GPL was not tested in court. Just imagine situation of one of the authors saying: I no longer want to see my code on the Internet. Let's say he contributed 30% of the code. Now what? He is the author, he has the right to do it. In most cases developers sign no agreements when their patches are merged.
    - cm3 10y ago
      I don't fully understand. You cannot take back your public contribution, just as you cannot ask the patent office to erase the patent from all records and have everyone aware of it forget about it, and remove each and all references that build on that patent. The world would be a much different place if smart people in the past hadn't invented Copyright and Patenting, which both are mostly being misused and are not used to foster innovation. Back then it was normal to hold onto secrets and patents and copyright were invented to incentivize publication under well-defined and not too long exclusivity periods after which other can freely improve on it. But today we have 20 year patent monopolies and Disney copyright absurdity.
    - cyphar 10y ago
      > I no longer want to see my code on the Internet. Such a statement doesn't make sense. Not to mention that you can't retroactively un-license something (unless the license has a termination clause). Free software licenses do not have termination clauses (by definition, the FSF won't approve them if they do because it restricts practical freedom). Though I'm fairly sure it would count as an "open source" license under the OSI definition. > In most cases developers sign no agreements when their patches are merged. If you submitted code under the DCO, you've signed an affadavit saying that you have the right to license the code and that it is licensed under the license of the project. For copyleft projects, you don't even need that (if you've distributed it then you've implicitly licensed it under the original license). But in either case, once you've licensed you code under some license then you can't terminate that license if it's a free software license.
  - cyphar 10y ago
    If the code is under a copyleft license, then distributing a modified copy is only possible by complying with the license. So at the very least, you can get the code under that license. Non-copyleft licenses might fall into a worse trap here, but that's why we have the DCO. An affidavit is more than enough.
- ArneBab 10y ago
  It’s the current maintainer who wants copyright assignment. He does not want to hand over the project to someone who refuses to lead it in a way consistent with his vision. Rather walk more slowly than walk in the wrong direction.
  - cm3 10y ago
    Isn't that even worse then? I mean, the FSF has a good track record and less people would object to assigning copyright over to the org.
    - timv 10y ago
      As far as I can tell, the current maintainer wants copyright assigned to the FSF. He is not willing to hand the project over to someone who isn't willing to do that. The proposed new maintainer is not willing to assign copyright to the FSF, and so seems to be forking the project instead. But it's not 100% clear exactly what's going on.
- willnorris 10y ago
  Just to be clear on this, Google projects (including side projects of Google employees) do not require copyright assignment in the way that FSF projects to. They require an explicit copyright license, but the author retains the copyright. Full details at https://cla.developers.google.com/about https://cla.developers.google.com/about
  - cm3 10y ago
    Interesting, thanks for the correction. Reading that page, it appears that this due to US IP ownership agreements for employees. Is that correct? If so, why isn't there an exception for personal-time-only contributions by single developers, or at least those outside a jurisdiction like the US where an employer may own each and all of your ideas and intellectual output? To be clear, I haven't lived or worked in the US, so this is all foreign and weird to me.
    - jtuente 10y ago
      US Copyright defaults to the author, it is only with employee contracts/agreements that one can forego the default and assign to the company. Something like the google license is there to help with making a clear distinction between google-owned copyright, author-owned copyright and author-owned copyright permanently licensed to google. Meaning that google will never be required to pay any kind of royalties for the author's work even after they leave employment at google.
      - decode 10y ago
        > US Copyright defaults to the author, it is only with employee contracts/agreements that one can forego the default and assign to the company. I'm pretty sure this is not true. In fact, it's the opposite of how it actually works. There's an explicit exception in the Copyright Act for a "work made for hire". If you're creating a opyrighted work for an employer, the employer is always the author of the work at the moment of inception. http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf
    - tracker1 10y ago
- cyphar 10y ago
  FSF copyright assignment is done such that they state they will always distribute your code under a copyleft license. So it's not an issue like with Canonical (which asks for the right to make copyleft code proprietary). Copyright assignment is important if you register your copyright to make strong enforcement possible. US copyright law doesn't deal with communities of contributors very well, in terms of those copyright holders exercising their rights.
klakier 10y ago
I agree - if he wanted to fork, he should created a new website.
_pmf_ 10y ago
> Benno also did not want to assign copyright to the FSF for his contributions. In Germany, you cannot legally sign away copyright (i.e. signing away your copyright is either an empty action or may even void other agreements contained in a larger contract).
- klakier 10y ago
  I suppose in most countries, one cannot sign away personal copy rights. You are always the author. But one can easily give right to use the work because of author's economic rights (and one must obligatory specify the fields of exploration in such agreement).
- Tomte 10y ago
  I think the FSF sorted that out, although I haven't seen their paperwork. It popped up a lot some years ago, and it seemed to have been solved.
zx2c4 10y ago
I don't know anything about the politics involved, and I don't even use nano (vim guy myself), but I just ran this out of curiosity: zx2c4@thinkpad ~/nano $ git shortlog -sne --since '3 years ago' 1298 Benno Schulenberg <bensberg@justemail.net> 64 Chris Allegretta <chrisa@asty.org> 6 Jordi Mallach <jordi@gnu.org> 3 Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> 3 Mike Scalora <mike@scalora.org> 2 Rishabh Dave <rishabhddave@gmail.com> Seems like Benno is clearly the driving force behind the project.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  With a record like that I think he should be allowed to do whatever he pleases with the project.
  - pekk 10y ago
    Committing to an existing project doesn't give you exclusive license rights over the project.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    It's free software, everybody is allowed to do whatever they please with the project. GNU doesn't have to support or endorse it, though.
  - ArneBab 10y ago
    I don’t think so. With that argument, anyone could take over any project just because he/she has more free time than the current maintainer. Would you want someone who steps up and does a lot of work in a project you started to suddenly tell you that he/she will now change the vision of the project and turn it in ways you don’t like? Let’s assume that you take your time to write clean code, do changes slowly and deliberately and think long about how to do something right before you start coding. Then someone steps up and does lots of cool things in a flurry of activity, but does not do them right and you already see the maintenance fallout from that approaching. Would you want that contributor to take over the project and use the name you established for this new kind of project? As a non-programming example: I’m writing a roleplaying system, and it took me several years to get from EWS-2.6 to having the concepts for EWS-3.0 nailed down — though without having finished text. If someone came in and did lots of work, I would still not want to see an EWS-3.0 which violates core principles I set down for the system. People are free to do that, but they have to do that in their own space, not in the space I created. Also changing the name all over the source code in the main version tracking repository is a pretty hostile step. It implies that the other one now considers the project his/her own. Essentially Benno should have made a bano, but I think that just turning GNU nano into his own project isn’t OK.
belorn 10y ago
Correct me if I am wrong here, but it sounds like GNU project requires that either all code is assigned to FSF, or none and then the project need to enforce copyright themselves. In this case, the current maintainer want to assign copyright, the new co-mainter don't, and thus the project got an internal conflict between the maintainer and co-maintainer. The hostility is thus primarily between the two maintainers, rather than between GNU and Benno.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ArneBab 10y ago
Do I understand it right that Benno is doing a lot of work, but he does not want to continue the project in a manner which is consistent with the vision Chris as the principal maintainer of the project holds?
- Z-r 10y ago
  Chris does not have any vision of the project anymore. He does not have enough time even to publish releases [0]. And it was actually he who suggested Benno to fork GNU nano. [0] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.editors.nano.devel/4598/focus=4680 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.editors.nano.devel/4598/focus=...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - infodroid 10y ago
    > ...it was actually he who suggested Benno to fork GNU nano I did not see any evidence for this in the discussions on the mailing list. Could you give some references?
    - carapace 10y ago
      If folks are not interested in following that process, the best thing might just be to move to github or another repository and abandon the guise that we are acting according to GNU guidelines. Benno, Mike S, Mike F, Mark M, especially interested in hearing your take. ~Chris Allegretta - http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.editors.nano.devel/4598/focus=4680 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.editors.nano.devel/4598/focus=...
  - carapace 10y ago
    <understate>This seems relevant.</understate> I wish I could upvote it twice.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
kazinator 10y ago
> GNU Nano has absolutely not left GNU. Right, it's just that all the new revisions of Nano that anyone will use going forward have left GNU.
Tomte 10y ago
It seems to me he's not forking. He's leaving GNU. That you intend to continue having a "GNU nano" doesn't change that. Just because it happened to be on your web space doesn't make it your project. A project is first and foremost the people behind it. Not a hosting provider. I consider you the fork. Without hostility. Edit: I may have missed/confused the acting people here. I'm not sure anymore if my comment above really hits the nail on its head.
- mikegerwitz 10y ago
  > I consider you the fork. Without hostility. Nano has been part of the GNU Project since 2001, and Benno has been contributing to that project for years.
dpark 10y ago
Why doesn't Chris just go update the website to clarify this? Surely Benno isn't the only one with access to change the site. Even if so, the domain is registered to Chris.
kazinator 10y ago
The copyright assignment requirements in GNU projects point to the GPL not being good enough, thereby undermining it. They are obviously rooted in the fear that in fact the FSF cannot use code that is merely GPL-ed, if someone else owns the copyright. "Use the GPL for your code to grant everyone rights and freedoms. Just not when giving to us; we would prefer your right, not your left, thank you very much." There is a legitimate concern that someone apparently placing code under the GPL might not have the right to do so. But for that, an affidavit should be good enough, not an affidavit plus assignment of copyright to the FSF. The paranoid copyright assignment obviously guards against the possibility that a rightfully proclaimed GPL can be retroactively revoked. Someone in the project changes their mind and says that these pieces which are wrote are no longer GPLed; not going forward, nor in any past revisions. (That author him or herself, not some previous employer or other third party, from whom permission had not been properly obtained to have that work under the GPL.) If the FSF believes this to be a real threat, any group of users anywhere relying on the GPL should take the same view.
- cyphar 10y ago
  GNU copyright assignment is to make enforcement actions possible[1]. In the US, copyright law doesn't really give a community much power to enforce their copyright claims. The GPL is not weak because of this, it's just how the FSF operates. The SFConservancy doesn't have this requirement for projects they support, but it's clear that the FSF lawyers believe that having copyright assignment makes enforcement much more powerful. As for "taking away people's freedom", the copyright assignment explicitly states that your contributions will always be under a copyleft license. So you're not losing any protection of the GPL if you contribute to GNU. That's just an insane proposition. [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
- gopalv 10y ago
  > If the FSF believes this to be a real threat, any group of users anywhere relying on the GPL should take the same view. The issue with GNU license assignment (at least in the years I worked on) was the "defense of infringement". The only legal recourse for a GPL violation is a copyright lawsuit and that can only be made by the copyright holder in question. If FSF wants to defend a GNU project in a court of law against infringement, they need to represent the copyright holders. As a GNU project, you opt into their legal infra as well as the technical ones.
mydudesstop 10y ago
C'mon now. It is Wednesday my dudes. Please don't mess up my favorite little text editor.
anonbanker 10y ago
so this is FFMPEG/LibAV all over again.
laughinghan 10y ago
The most prominent claim in your comment is that Benno forked the project "with hostility" by updating the official GNU Nano website. Can you explain why you consider nano-editor.org to officially "belong" to GNU? Chris Allegretta, whom you call the current maintainer, has gone on record saying he's the one who changed the website, and that Benno did not take over the website in a hostile way: http://www.asty.org/2016/06/23/whats-up-with-nano/ http://www.asty.org/2016/06/23/whats-up-with-nano/

cm3 10y ago

But if a or the driving force of a project takes things elsewhere, the users will eventually follow. If the disagreement was over GNU's insistence to require assigning copyright to the FSF, then I can fully understand the reluctance. It's the same reason many contributors cannot officially submit patches to side projects of Google employees, Ubuntu projects, etc.

klakier 10y ago
Do you know that according to copy rights, open source projects are mess. Nobody tried it in the court, but if some developer contributing to project went to court saying "This part of code is mine, I don't want it to be modified by other people", then the project could be in trouble. Nobody tried that (yet). That's why some OS projects require signing Developer Certificates of Origin etc.
- adrianN 10y ago
  No, the courts have already handled cases around the GPL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Legal_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Leg...
  - klakier 10y ago
    These are about violation of GPL, none of the suits was filed by individual developer who was contributing to the code base. Show me better examples.
    - mikegerwitz 10y ago
      > none of the suits was filed by individual developer who was contributing to the code base (You're not implying otherwise, but this seems like a good place to put this comment.) An individual developer can bring a case against a distributor violating the GPL if they can prove that their code was involved in the violation. A good example are the contributors who brought a Linux (kernel) case against VMWare: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/29/vmware-hearing/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/29/vmware-hearing/
    - cm3 10y ago
      > none of the suits was filed by individual developer who was contributing to the code base Isn't that what actually happened in the GPL-Violations.org project with netfilter?
      - klakier 10y ago
        It makes me happy to see this. But still I'd advise using developer agreements, if you want the control of the project. And correct license of course!
        cm3 10y ago
        And it's proof that like Oracle suing Google over 10 lines of code, it's enough for one or more contributors to claim ownership of some (small) part as a basis to take, say, Netgear to court. Thus you don't necessarily need to assign copyright over to a single person or organization.
- infodroid 10y ago
  The way I see it, if you contribute to a project for example by sending a patch to it by email or pull request then you agree to be bound by the license. Even if there is no copyright assignment. Otherwise you would not have the right to modify the software to write your patch in the first place. This just seems like common sense to me.
  - thomasahle 10y ago
    The problem is if the maintainer wants to change the license (Like GPL2 -> GPL3). That's only possible if the contributors have signed over copyright, or the maintainer can track down every person who ever sent a patch, and get them to agree.
    - nnutter 10y ago
      I don't think GPL2 -> GPL3 is a valid example of that. Usually it is to dual-license with a non-open-source license or some other incompatible open-source licenses. The GPL "upgrade" clause, > Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.
      - bluejekyll 10y ago
        I think you missed the if clause: > If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", I'm no lawyer, but I think the source has to mention that explicitly. So it's not true of ALL gpl projects. In this case though you are right because nano, it appears, specifies it's license as: > License: GNU General Public License v3 or later So, while true in this case it's not always true (see Linux kernel license, GPLv2, no upgrade).
        cyphar 10y ago
        Most GPL projects do this. I don't have access to my box, but if you did a search for licenses you'd find many use "or later" (and in fact a lot of code within Linux uses "or later" as well). So practically it's a very common upgrade path. And some people will actually email every contributor to ask to relicense the code.
- klakier 10y ago
  What I meant here, is not that GPL was not tested in court. Just imagine situation of one of the authors saying: I no longer want to see my code on the Internet. Let's say he contributed 30% of the code. Now what? He is the author, he has the right to do it. In most cases developers sign no agreements when their patches are merged.
  - cm3 10y ago
    I don't fully understand. You cannot take back your public contribution, just as you cannot ask the patent office to erase the patent from all records and have everyone aware of it forget about it, and remove each and all references that build on that patent. The world would be a much different place if smart people in the past hadn't invented Copyright and Patenting, which both are mostly being misused and are not used to foster innovation. Back then it was normal to hold onto secrets and patents and copyright were invented to incentivize publication under well-defined and not too long exclusivity periods after which other can freely improve on it. But today we have 20 year patent monopolies and Disney copyright absurdity.
  - cyphar 10y ago
    > I no longer want to see my code on the Internet. Such a statement doesn't make sense. Not to mention that you can't retroactively un-license something (unless the license has a termination clause). Free software licenses do not have termination clauses (by definition, the FSF won't approve them if they do because it restricts practical freedom). Though I'm fairly sure it would count as an "open source" license under the OSI definition. > In most cases developers sign no agreements when their patches are merged. If you submitted code under the DCO, you've signed an affadavit saying that you have the right to license the code and that it is licensed under the license of the project. For copyleft projects, you don't even need that (if you've distributed it then you've implicitly licensed it under the original license). But in either case, once you've licensed you code under some license then you can't terminate that license if it's a free software license.
- cyphar 10y ago
  If the code is under a copyleft license, then distributing a modified copy is only possible by complying with the license. So at the very least, you can get the code under that license. Non-copyleft licenses might fall into a worse trap here, but that's why we have the DCO. An affidavit is more than enough.
ArneBab 10y ago
It’s the current maintainer who wants copyright assignment. He does not want to hand over the project to someone who refuses to lead it in a way consistent with his vision. Rather walk more slowly than walk in the wrong direction.
- cm3 10y ago
  Isn't that even worse then? I mean, the FSF has a good track record and less people would object to assigning copyright over to the org.
  - timv 10y ago
    As far as I can tell, the current maintainer wants copyright assigned to the FSF. He is not willing to hand the project over to someone who isn't willing to do that. The proposed new maintainer is not willing to assign copyright to the FSF, and so seems to be forking the project instead. But it's not 100% clear exactly what's going on.
willnorris 10y ago
Just to be clear on this, Google projects (including side projects of Google employees) do not require copyright assignment in the way that FSF projects to. They require an explicit copyright license, but the author retains the copyright. Full details at https://cla.developers.google.com/about https://cla.developers.google.com/about
- cm3 10y ago
  Interesting, thanks for the correction. Reading that page, it appears that this due to US IP ownership agreements for employees. Is that correct? If so, why isn't there an exception for personal-time-only contributions by single developers, or at least those outside a jurisdiction like the US where an employer may own each and all of your ideas and intellectual output? To be clear, I haven't lived or worked in the US, so this is all foreign and weird to me.
  - jtuente 10y ago
    US Copyright defaults to the author, it is only with employee contracts/agreements that one can forego the default and assign to the company. Something like the google license is there to help with making a clear distinction between google-owned copyright, author-owned copyright and author-owned copyright permanently licensed to google. Meaning that google will never be required to pay any kind of royalties for the author's work even after they leave employment at google.
    - decode 10y ago
      > US Copyright defaults to the author, it is only with employee contracts/agreements that one can forego the default and assign to the company. I'm pretty sure this is not true. In fact, it's the opposite of how it actually works. There's an explicit exception in the Copyright Act for a "work made for hire". If you're creating a opyrighted work for an employer, the employer is always the author of the work at the moment of inception. http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ09.pdf
  - tracker1 10y ago
cyphar 10y ago
FSF copyright assignment is done such that they state they will always distribute your code under a copyleft license. So it's not an issue like with Canonical (which asks for the right to make copyleft code proprietary). Copyright assignment is important if you register your copyright to make strong enforcement possible. US copyright law doesn't deal with communities of contributors very well, in terms of those copyright holders exercising their rights.

klakier 10y ago

I agree - if he wanted to fork, he should created a new website.

_pmf_ 10y ago

> Benno also did not want to assign copyright to the FSF for his contributions. In Germany, you cannot legally sign away copyright (i.e. signing away your copyright is either an empty action or may even void other agreements contained in a larger contract).

klakier 10y ago
I suppose in most countries, one cannot sign away personal copy rights. You are always the author. But one can easily give right to use the work because of author's economic rights (and one must obligatory specify the fields of exploration in such agreement).
Tomte 10y ago
I think the FSF sorted that out, although I haven't seen their paperwork. It popped up a lot some years ago, and it seemed to have been solved.

zx2c4 10y ago

I don't know anything about the politics involved, and I don't even use nano (vim guy myself), but I just ran this out of curiosity: zx2c4@thinkpad ~/nano $ git shortlog -sne --since '3 years ago' 1298 Benno Schulenberg <bensberg@justemail.net> 64 Chris Allegretta <chrisa@asty.org> 6 Jordi Mallach <jordi@gnu.org> 3 Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> 3 Mike Scalora <mike@scalora.org> 2 Rishabh Dave <rishabhddave@gmail.com> Seems like Benno is clearly the driving force behind the project.

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
With a record like that I think he should be allowed to do whatever he pleases with the project.
- pekk 10y ago
  Committing to an existing project doesn't give you exclusive license rights over the project.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  It's free software, everybody is allowed to do whatever they please with the project. GNU doesn't have to support or endorse it, though.
- ArneBab 10y ago
  I don’t think so. With that argument, anyone could take over any project just because he/she has more free time than the current maintainer. Would you want someone who steps up and does a lot of work in a project you started to suddenly tell you that he/she will now change the vision of the project and turn it in ways you don’t like? Let’s assume that you take your time to write clean code, do changes slowly and deliberately and think long about how to do something right before you start coding. Then someone steps up and does lots of cool things in a flurry of activity, but does not do them right and you already see the maintenance fallout from that approaching. Would you want that contributor to take over the project and use the name you established for this new kind of project? As a non-programming example: I’m writing a roleplaying system, and it took me several years to get from EWS-2.6 to having the concepts for EWS-3.0 nailed down — though without having finished text. If someone came in and did lots of work, I would still not want to see an EWS-3.0 which violates core principles I set down for the system. People are free to do that, but they have to do that in their own space, not in the space I created. Also changing the name all over the source code in the main version tracking repository is a pretty hostile step. It implies that the other one now considers the project his/her own. Essentially Benno should have made a bano, but I think that just turning GNU nano into his own project isn’t OK.

belorn 10y ago

Correct me if I am wrong here, but it sounds like GNU project requires that either all code is assigned to FSF, or none and then the project need to enforce copyright themselves. In this case, the current maintainer want to assign copyright, the new co-mainter don't, and thus the project got an internal conflict between the maintainer and co-maintainer. The hostility is thus primarily between the two maintainers, rather than between GNU and Benno.

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ArneBab 10y ago

Do I understand it right that Benno is doing a lot of work, but he does not want to continue the project in a manner which is consistent with the vision Chris as the principal maintainer of the project holds?

Z-r 10y ago
Chris does not have any vision of the project anymore. He does not have enough time even to publish releases [0]. And it was actually he who suggested Benno to fork GNU nano. [0] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.editors.nano.devel/4598/focus=4680 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.editors.nano.devel/4598/focus=...
- deleted 10y ago
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- infodroid 10y ago
  > ...it was actually he who suggested Benno to fork GNU nano I did not see any evidence for this in the discussions on the mailing list. Could you give some references?
  - carapace 10y ago
    If folks are not interested in following that process, the best thing might just be to move to github or another repository and abandon the guise that we are acting according to GNU guidelines. Benno, Mike S, Mike F, Mark M, especially interested in hearing your take. ~Chris Allegretta - http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.editors.nano.devel/4598/focus=4680 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.editors.nano.devel/4598/focus=...
- carapace 10y ago
  <understate>This seems relevant.</understate> I wish I could upvote it twice.
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kazinator 10y ago

> GNU Nano has absolutely not left GNU. Right, it's just that all the new revisions of Nano that anyone will use going forward have left GNU.

Tomte 10y ago

It seems to me he's not forking. He's leaving GNU. That you intend to continue having a "GNU nano" doesn't change that. Just because it happened to be on your web space doesn't make it your project. A project is first and foremost the people behind it. Not a hosting provider. I consider you the fork. Without hostility. Edit: I may have missed/confused the acting people here. I'm not sure anymore if my comment above really hits the nail on its head.

mikegerwitz 10y ago
> I consider you the fork. Without hostility. Nano has been part of the GNU Project since 2001, and Benno has been contributing to that project for years.

dpark 10y ago

Why doesn't Chris just go update the website to clarify this? Surely Benno isn't the only one with access to change the site. Even if so, the domain is registered to Chris.

kazinator 10y ago

The copyright assignment requirements in GNU projects point to the GPL not being good enough, thereby undermining it. They are obviously rooted in the fear that in fact the FSF cannot use code that is merely GPL-ed, if someone else owns the copyright. "Use the GPL for your code to grant everyone rights and freedoms. Just not when giving to us; we would prefer your right, not your left, thank you very much." There is a legitimate concern that someone apparently placing code under the GPL might not have the right to do so. But for that, an affidavit should be good enough, not an affidavit plus assignment of copyright to the FSF. The paranoid copyright assignment obviously guards against the possibility that a rightfully proclaimed GPL can be retroactively revoked. Someone in the project changes their mind and says that these pieces which are wrote are no longer GPLed; not going forward, nor in any past revisions. (That author him or herself, not some previous employer or other third party, from whom permission had not been properly obtained to have that work under the GPL.) If the FSF believes this to be a real threat, any group of users anywhere relying on the GPL should take the same view.

cyphar 10y ago
GNU copyright assignment is to make enforcement actions possible[1]. In the US, copyright law doesn't really give a community much power to enforce their copyright claims. The GPL is not weak because of this, it's just how the FSF operates. The SFConservancy doesn't have this requirement for projects they support, but it's clear that the FSF lawyers believe that having copyright assignment makes enforcement much more powerful. As for "taking away people's freedom", the copyright assignment explicitly states that your contributions will always be under a copyleft license. So you're not losing any protection of the GPL if you contribute to GNU. That's just an insane proposition. [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
gopalv 10y ago
> If the FSF believes this to be a real threat, any group of users anywhere relying on the GPL should take the same view. The issue with GNU license assignment (at least in the years I worked on) was the "defense of infringement". The only legal recourse for a GPL violation is a copyright lawsuit and that can only be made by the copyright holder in question. If FSF wants to defend a GNU project in a court of law against infringement, they need to represent the copyright holders. As a GNU project, you opt into their legal infra as well as the technical ones.

mydudesstop 10y ago

C'mon now. It is Wednesday my dudes. Please don't mess up my favorite little text editor.

anonbanker 10y ago

so this is FFMPEG/LibAV all over again.

laughinghan 10y ago

The most prominent claim in your comment is that Benno forked the project "with hostility" by updating the official GNU Nano website. Can you explain why you consider nano-editor.org to officially "belong" to GNU? Chris Allegretta, whom you call the current maintainer, has gone on record saying he's the one who changed the website, and that Benno did not take over the website in a hostile way: http://www.asty.org/2016/06/23/whats-up-with-nano/ http://www.asty.org/2016/06/23/whats-up-with-nano/