24 ms·

GNU sed 4.2.2 released, maintainer resigns

399 points by bonzini 14y ago

marcoamorales 14y ago
As someone who shares beliefs with FSF's ideals, reading this rant makes me think that maybe there's a chance to bring up another movement with the relative same ideals as Free Software but have a different type of leadership.
- af3 14y ago
  why bringing something up? [1] just fork, code and... maybe make profit. [2] [1] http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/ [2] http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/A_Brief_History_of_Red_Hat_Linux http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/A_Brief_History_of_Red_H...
  - dalke 14y ago
    Or Ubuntu? ;)
    - dillona 14y ago
      Shuttleworth is the last person I want to leave my fate up to. He is even after RMS.
      - dalke 14y ago
        It's the UNG project - Ubuntu is Not GNU! (Has no one already made that pun?)
  - dlisboa 14y ago
    Because organization is important. There's more to software distribution than coding and the legal basis of it all is unifying for most free software. Some times you cannot "just fork, code" because the underlying legal framework for your software is broken, and you're forced to reinvent the wheel.
    - af3 14y ago
      the license under which code is released is important, the rest are excuses.
- algorias 14y ago
  Doesn't the open source movement overlap quite heavily with the ideals of free software? I know there are also significant differences, specially the tolerance of proprietary code. I'm not trying to start a flamewar here, just honestly curious why you think a 3rd alternative would bring change in any meaningful way. We have enough fragmentation as things stand.
  - marcoamorales 14y ago
    They do overlap, but Open Source Initiative doesn't care at all about users' freedoms, which I personally believe to be very important.
    - dalke 14y ago
      Agreed. It took a while for me to understand the idea that the free/open source difference is reasonably described as the difference between user freedoms and developer freedoms.
      - chimeracoder 14y ago
        I like that distinction, but to be clear, the distinction isn't strictly an "either-or". It's pretty clear that "open source" is motivated by developer freedoms, but the fact that "free software" is motivated by user freedoms doesn't make it less about developer freedoms. In other words, if you subscribe to the four tenets of software freedom as they pertain to users, "free software" also provides as much freedom to the developers as is possible without compromising on the users' freedoms.
        dalke 14y ago
        Developers are a proper subset of users. There's no either-or here.
        chimeracoder 14y ago
        Well, that's my point. "Open source" protects only the freedoms that relate to a portion of users (developers), whereas "free software" protects the freedoms that relate to all users.
pestaa 14y ago
I made a few vague observations based on comments scattered around the web and this rant just made me want to write them down. * GNU leadership seemed very stubborn from the beginning. * GNU software is really great. * Gnome is the new GNU. I wish they wouldn't lose more momentum or the wide variety of software they write and maintain will suffer, too.
- dfc 14y ago
  "Gnome is the new GNU" I have heard this before but never really understood what it was supposed to convey? Is this statement purely from a technical viewpoint? Has Gnome done a lot of work with licensing and activism that I have not heard about?
  - geofft 14y ago
    GNU is about developing a free distribution. The FSF is about licensing and activism. They're basically the same organization, but "GNOME is the new GNU" is a very different claim from "GNOME is the new FSF". And yes, you can basically get a complete distribution from GNOME these days, although you're better off going through one of the real distros. And they are contributing the bulk of technical work for the distribution, such that GNOME is actually a more meaningful term for it than Linux (which "GNU" never was).
    - dfc 14y ago
      "And yes, you can basically get a complete distribution from GNOME these days, although you're better off going through one of the real distros. And they are contributing the bulk of technical work for the distribution, such that GNOME is actually a more meaningful term for it than Linux (which "GNU" never was)." Either a "complete distribution" means something different to you or you can't be serious? I know very little about this "gnome distribution" or the bulk of the technical efforts that went into it. What version of the kernel is used? Do they include any distro maintained patches for the kernel or is it pristine linux-stable? What package management system is gnome using for their distribution? Is the default compiler in the Gnome distribution llvm or gcc? How do they handle the installation of ruby gems or python eggs? Upstart, systemd, or plain old init?
MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Why is Stallman still BDFL if he hasn't contributed a meaningful amount of code in years? Let him be the spokesperson so he gets the attention he desperately needs and leave the coding standards to people who code.
- dalke 14y ago
  The FSF isn't about coding standards, its foremost about moral and ethical standards. Edit: Oops! You mean BFDL for GNU, as compared to the FSF. That's a good question - should Stallman relinquish GNU leadership? What is the replacement plan should something happen to him? I don't think that recent hands-on code experience necessarily plays a role in either case.
- piqufoh 14y ago
  Agreed, but by definition BDFL is FL - For Life.
  - sigzero 14y ago
    I actually never heard that he was BDFL. I thought that only applied to Guido and Python.
    - callmevlad 14y ago
      John Gruber considers himself to be the BDFL of Markdown [1], though many question the 'B' part. [1] http://www.mail-archive.com/markdown-discuss@six.pairlist.net/msg02703.html http://www.mail-archive.com/markdown-discuss@six.pairlist.ne...
- PuercoPop 14y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly, as Eben Moglen succintly put it in Die Gedanken Sind Frei: "The revolution runs on working code". Those write the code, make the shots. Free Software is a push effort. http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/berlin-keynote.html http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/berlin-keynote....
- 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
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dfc 14y ago
I have been a FSF supporter for a very long time. That being said I have never understood why the gnu-prog-discuss mailing list is so secretive. I can understand having restrictions on posting but I have bever heard a good argument for keeping the discussions behind closed doors. I do not think SPI has any cabalistic mailing lists.
- bonzini 14y ago
  It's secretive because "GNU is not about openness". I personally believe it's okay to have a "cabalistic" mailing list, the problems are: 1) that the open mailing lists (bug-standards, gnu-system-discuss) are basically unused; 2) that rms is trying to make some topics (e.g., discussing if something could be used as a GPL loophole) taboo even for gnu-prog-discuss.
  - tonfa 14y ago
    > rms is trying to make some topics (e.g., discussing if something could be used as a GPL loophole) taboo even for gnu-prog-discuss. Might not be a bad idea, since those discussions could be used after discovery as part of a trial.
    - belorn 14y ago
      If the problem is the discussion about loopholes, than why not just create a second mailing list about that topic and leave the other ones open?
      - rbanffy 14y ago
        Because what you discuss on a closed list can still be used as evidence.
piqufoh 14y ago
If GNU BDFL is not supported by the community, and he wields his power unwisely, then maybe it is time for a fork - GNOME?
- rwg 14y ago
  Except GNOME is a GNU project (the "G" in "GNOME" used to stand for "GNU"). This point was driven home about three years ago when RMS descended from upon high to decree that posts mentioning non-free software shouldn't be allowed on GNOME's blog aggregator, Planet GNOME. Coincidentally, it was around this time that people started making noise about splitting GNOME off from GNU...
vsbuffalo 14y ago
I really like the elephant and gazelle argument. I am a huge emacs proponent and I love using it, but I feel like it need to be forked and gutted. The whole beauty of an extensible editor is that extensions should be optional. Including more shit each release is not justifiable.
- kindahero 14y ago
  > but I feel like it need to be forked and gutted. There is Xemacs FYI.. > Including more shit each release is not justifiable. Maintainers have indeed plans to split the packages out of the core, as the package manager is already up and running..
- bonzini 14y ago
  That was not a technical argument (slow, etc.) It's about the structure of the project.
peripetylabs 14y ago
Copyright assignment is impractical, and a great way to eliminate outside contributions to a project.
- nullc 14y ago
  But the polar opposite where companies like qualcomm are aggressively patenting techniques their employees 'contribute' to LLVM/CLANG with nary a suggestion of offering licensing that makes it lawful for anyone to use... thats okay? What the FSF does has its costs and limitations, but when the mobile patent war spreads to LLVM and renders it unusable except in the underground and by a few large patent mongers, we'll be thankful for the FSF's licensing stewardship on GCC and the rest of the GNU projects.
  - justincormack 14y ago
    Well the Apache license protects against that too.
  - DannyBee 14y ago
    LLVM's developer policy requires any developers contributing patented code to non-assert any patents with that code. This is particularly true if they work for companies. If you know of places where this is not occurring, or people are contributing code that is being aggressively patented, please email me personally and i'll make sure it gets taken care of. Also note that assignment does not fix anything related to patents. You seem to be confusing contributor agreements in general with copyright assignments.
- binarycrusader 14y ago
  I disagree. Copyright assignment is appropriate for some projects and not others. The mistake many people make is assuming that it should always happen or never happen. Some projects owe part of their success to copyright assignment, like Ogre3D.
juddlyon 14y ago
I wouldn't characterize that as a rant, Rails is a Ghetto was a rant. This was more of a reasoned venting. Too bad though, the guy seems like he's poured a lot of himself into these projects (from an outsider looking in).
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  Rails is a Ghetto, for those who haven't read it: http://web.archive.org/web/20080103072111/http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html http://web.archive.org/web/20080103072111/http://www.zedshaw... A classic rant by Zed Shaw.
  - crag 14y ago
    I love that rant. I still (re)read it. Gives me a few laughs every time.
  - pooriaazimi 14y ago
    This is probably a more complete version: http://web.archive.org/web/20090107030956/http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html http://web.archive.org/web/20090107030956/http://www.zedshaw... (I haven't yet read that piece)
belorn 14y ago
I find the "rant" and the linked post by Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos sadly missing any direct details over what the actual issues are. From reading it, one could get the idea that all the problem stems from GNU coding standard being archaic and not updated for modern programming. Okey, I am skipping all the rant about FSF not funding software projects to pay developers, or that the GNU brand is not "hot", but both feels a bit silly. The hotness of a brand is transient, and in reality, only a handful number of brands inspires users and developers. I can't see how GNU would be more or less hot than say Gnome, KDE, or apache which each has a large number of projects under them. As for funding, since when did any of those organizations actually fund the projects? They role is provide help in setting up funding systems, help with tax declarations and provide further legal help. Thankfully, the last link in the end (http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/529522/854aed3fb6398b79/ http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/529522/854aed3fb6398b79/) looks to bring some light of what the actually issues really are: copyright assignments being US only, who the "owner" of a community project is, Nikos' feeling that he aren't getting any tangible benefits from being under the name GNU, and last a request for more transparency in the GNU projects decision process. As for those reasons, there are two I agree with and two I don't. Firstly, Copyright assignments being US only is bad and shows an inflexibility a non-profit foundation should not have. Their role is to help projects, and thus should be as flexible as possible and thus provide equal possibility to assign copyright to US or EU. Second, as for who the owner of a community project is, the answer should stare the developers in the face. It should always be the community (developers and users) that "own" the project and decides its fate. If Nikos' announcement had included a decision by the community (preferable in a transparent manner), it would had been hard for GNU to object. Third, Nikos' feeling that he aren't getting any tangible benefits from GNU are his to have, but legal assistance is something many projects value. If a project has no need for legal assistance, no need for help in creating donation systems, and don't feel a threat about lawsuits against individual developers, then a foundation such as GNU, Apache or other similar organization are not going to give much tangible benefits. Fourth, in regard to more transparency in the GNU projects decision process, I can only agree with Nikos. The corner pillar in a community is transparency, and GNU should be fully aware of this. If there are discontent growing because of an lack of transparency, it should be addressed and fixed with high priority.
- 14y ago
cmccabe 14y ago
I wonder if his copyright assignment agreement also covered the assignment of trademarks. The name of the project, which seems to be the thing under dispute, would certainly fall under that umbrella rather than copyright law. On the other hand, GNU might have a pretty strong case that including the word "GNU" in the name without being actually affiliated with them would be misleading. I have to say, cases like this really point out the flaws in copyright assignment. It just doesn't make sense from a developer's perspective. If you put in the work to create the code, why would you allow someone else to control the licensing and the name? With proprietary software, the reason is clear-- in exchange for money. But with open source or free software, you really have nothing to gain from copyright assignment, and a lot to lose. If you disagree with whatever the GPLv4 ends up being (or v5, or v6...), your only option is to fork the codebase and choose a new name. Experience has shown that renaming the project loses most of the userbase (think OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice.) This just isn't right. Developers should have a say in how their code is used-- they should be consulted when the code is going to be relicensed.
deleted 14y ago
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dasht 14y ago
For a time I too was the maintainer for GNU sed. Part of that time I was paid by the FSF for that work (this was a long time ago, when the FSF had a small staff working directly on the Hurd and GNU). When I started, GNU sed was very incompatible with the relatively new Posix standard for sed. When I finished, it was less incompatible. It was during this same time that I started work on a new regexp engine for sed but that was not done by the time I stopped work on sed. From that position I was able to observe fairly closely how the GNU project was being led, technically, in the days before the Linux kernel had had any real impact. RMS's technical leadership was, I think, not very skilled. Let me explain what I mean: If you were working on a program and sought his advice, he was very good at zeroing in on the issues and giving excellent advice. And sometimes if you were working on a program and he noticed something he didn't like about your approach, his criticisms were very good. People used to tell stories about how good a programmer he was and those stories were basically all true. He was sharp and I assume that, in spite of his age, he still is. The problem was that he showed no effective capacity to really lead the larger meta project of pulling together a complete OS. He tried -- with projects like autoconf and documents like the GNU coding standards. And he kept a list of programs that, once we had those (he reckoned) along with a kernel -- GNU would be "done". That was about the extent of his "big picture" for project management. Mainly, he concentrated on advocating for the idea of software freedom. I think the gambit was that if enough people demand their freedom, the project of organizing a GNU project would become easier. I don't think this gambit worked. That was never a clear enough, coherent enough, or informed enough vision of the complete GNU project and, consequently, GNU has never really successfully gelled. You can grab some "100% libre" distributions, these days, but only barely. There is no sustainable culture and technical organization there ("yet", I hope). The RMS failure I see is a failure at being a community organizer of GNU programmers. A lot of people got the vague idea of a GNU project. Many of us were happily recruited to the goal. But everyone I worked with at the FSF, including me, kind of went off in various incoherent directions -- doing what we guessed would help and that seemed interesting to us. We never "pulled together as a team" and, in the GNU project, that still doesn't happen. The GNU project gradually accumulated a heck of a lot of very good "parts" but could never gel. The first three world-changing releases (GDB, GCC, and Emacs) really startled people. The various shell/text utilities in those early days spread because they were often usefully a little bit better than the proprietary "native" equivalents shipped by Sun, Dec, AT&T, etc. People sat up and took notice but behind the scenes the project of setting up a lasting "complete OS" project that would promote software freedom for all users ... never quite came together. The "open source" people -- who I also later worked for, because I made a mistake in trusting them at their personal word to me -- seemed at first like they might help bring resources to the problem. In fact, what they mostly concentrated on was creating proprietary products using the free software "parts" from the incomplete GNU project. In the early days they sought to monopolize some of the key labor for the GNU project (and they succeeded, because they paid much better than RMS and many of those particular hackers didn't really give a shit about the freedom of users). As the "open source" industry matured it perfected its model of a perpetually incomplete / inadequate free software OS as a source of inspiration to enthusiastic youngsters, realized in practioce as a perpetually freedom-denying set of proprietary OS products. Companies like Red Hat and Canonical realized that they could exploit the deficit of community organizing to charge high rents for libre software, so long as they don't care seriously about the freedom of users. That's what they did and what they do. So in my view, RMS was not good (and still is not good) at leading the GNU project -- but the real tragedy is brought on by the glad-handing, deep-pocketed, "open source" rentiers who place concern for their own profit above the freedom of the community.
chernevik 14y ago
All disagreements aside, I'm deeply grateful for the efforts made to maintain and extend tools like sed. I can't help see posts like this and worry about the perpetuation of open source, and wish I had the chops to do more to help. As I write I'm downloading a Raspberry Pi image for my son's hardware. I'm getting him an Arduino, a soldering iron and a book for Christmas. I'm looking forward to learning along with him. I don't claim to understand the particular flows of code or inspiration, but I don't see how those projects happen without open source. I also don't see how the Pi happens without industrial scale chip production. As I understand the matter, the Pi was developed by Broadcom staff on their own or 20% time, and its production occurs on interstitial time on production lines that could never be justified by a $25 SOIC. Pi is basically a cheap add-on to a massive industrial base. Of course one point of vision is describing a realizable potential not apparent to the rest of us. But vision can and does proceed despite deviations from its perfect realization -- and sometimes is corrected by those deviations. I deeply disagree with RMS' politics, I'm deeply grateful for his technical contributions. I hope the community can always find a way forward.
- epistasis 14y ago
  > I can't help see posts like this and worry about the perpetuation of open source, and wish I had the chops to do more to help. I wouldn't worry about open source, that is thriving and alive. "Free software" is different, and very specialized. I also deeply disagree with RMS, but further I disagree with "free software" being the one true way (though I happily use it), and think that open source is better all around, for everyone. [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h... [2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html
ohnoohno 14y ago
My view: sed does not need to be "extended" nor should it require much maintenance. At least, the BSD sed's I use have not needed much work. I recall Brian Kernighan mentioning how little maintenance awk has required over the years. As such, I fail to see why changing maintainers is newsworthy. Perhaps someone was looking for an excuse to state their opinions on other matters? I'll be honest I could not understand what Mr Bonzini is trying to say anymore than I could understand Mr Stallman's antics in the recent YouTube clip. With all due respect, what are these people on about? What is the problem? Clearly and succinctly, please.
- bonzini 14y ago
  Just as an example of extending sed, I introduced "sed -i". Yes, it doesn't require much maintenance, but sometimes you can be surprised. I started maintaining GNU grep 3 years ago because it was in a really sorry state. Some parts were almost rewritten to make it faster and more correct.
  - ohnoohno 14y ago
    I never use sed -i because I can't rely on that being a standard feature as I move from system to system. With a utility as basic as sed that is found on almost every UNIX (and hence often used in a system's startup or configuration scripts, etc.), I want my own sed scripts to work consistently across all systems I might use. If I really want to create temp files I can use ed or use sed with shell redirection. Were it for some reason a requirement, I can avoid temp files, at least for the substitution (s) command, as follows: sed -a '"$1"';H;$!d;g;w'$2 where $1 is some sed s commands and $2 is a file This is not "perfect" as there will blank lines, but it does the job without temp files (if that were really a concern). If GNU grep was in need of repair and you fixed it, then I thank you. But I'm not clear on how that justifies any "extensions" to GNU grep. Maintenance, at least to me, means fixing things, not extending them and adding more complexity and things that can potentially break or create incompatibilities across different UNIX's.
    - kroger 14y ago
nnq 14y ago
> It is likely not possible to convince a diverse group such as the group of GNU maintainers to agree on coding standards for C++ ...bluntly asking: why? (In any closed-source C++ project, if someone writes a "style guide and coding standard" thing and the project manager supports it, people start writing "compliant" code, grunting or moaning at first but they do, and then it becomes part of "company culture" and people find it natural to write code by it - I believe with Google's C++ was like this too... why does it has to be harder for an open source project?)
- tomprince 14y ago
  That was exactly the point being made. That things like coding standards often need somebody to make a decision and enforce it, and that RMS didn't do that.
ilaksh 14y ago
I believe that MIT/BSD/Apache-style licenses are not only better for business but also better for developers and better for users than GPL-ish licenses. If we get to a point where people don't have to make money, then maybe GPLish will be better. I think that in a way the GPL and older code bases are just a less evolved and less practical tradition. If I'm wrong, please explain to me why I'm wrong, because I would like to know.

399 points by bonzini 14y ago

As someone who shares beliefs with FSF's ideals, reading this rant makes me think that maybe there's a chance to bring up another movement with the relative same ideals as Free Software but have a different type of leadership.

af3 14y ago
why bringing something up? [1] just fork, code and... maybe make profit. [2] [1] http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/ [2] http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/A_Brief_History_of_Red_Hat_Linux http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/A_Brief_History_of_Red_H...
- dalke 14y ago
  Or Ubuntu? ;)
  - dillona 14y ago
    Shuttleworth is the last person I want to leave my fate up to. He is even after RMS.
    - dalke 14y ago
      It's the UNG project - Ubuntu is Not GNU! (Has no one already made that pun?)
- dlisboa 14y ago
  Because organization is important. There's more to software distribution than coding and the legal basis of it all is unifying for most free software. Some times you cannot "just fork, code" because the underlying legal framework for your software is broken, and you're forced to reinvent the wheel.
  - af3 14y ago
    the license under which code is released is important, the rest are excuses.
algorias 14y ago
Doesn't the open source movement overlap quite heavily with the ideals of free software? I know there are also significant differences, specially the tolerance of proprietary code. I'm not trying to start a flamewar here, just honestly curious why you think a 3rd alternative would bring change in any meaningful way. We have enough fragmentation as things stand.
- marcoamorales 14y ago
  They do overlap, but Open Source Initiative doesn't care at all about users' freedoms, which I personally believe to be very important.
  - dalke 14y ago
    Agreed. It took a while for me to understand the idea that the free/open source difference is reasonably described as the difference between user freedoms and developer freedoms.
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
      I like that distinction, but to be clear, the distinction isn't strictly an "either-or". It's pretty clear that "open source" is motivated by developer freedoms, but the fact that "free software" is motivated by user freedoms doesn't make it less about developer freedoms. In other words, if you subscribe to the four tenets of software freedom as they pertain to users, "free software" also provides as much freedom to the developers as is possible without compromising on the users' freedoms.
      - dalke 14y ago
        Developers are a proper subset of users. There's no either-or here.
        chimeracoder 14y ago
        Well, that's my point. "Open source" protects only the freedoms that relate to a portion of users (developers), whereas "free software" protects the freedoms that relate to all users.

pestaa 14y ago

I made a few vague observations based on comments scattered around the web and this rant just made me want to write them down. * GNU leadership seemed very stubborn from the beginning. * GNU software is really great. * Gnome is the new GNU. I wish they wouldn't lose more momentum or the wide variety of software they write and maintain will suffer, too.

dfc 14y ago
"Gnome is the new GNU" I have heard this before but never really understood what it was supposed to convey? Is this statement purely from a technical viewpoint? Has Gnome done a lot of work with licensing and activism that I have not heard about?
- geofft 14y ago
  GNU is about developing a free distribution. The FSF is about licensing and activism. They're basically the same organization, but "GNOME is the new GNU" is a very different claim from "GNOME is the new FSF". And yes, you can basically get a complete distribution from GNOME these days, although you're better off going through one of the real distros. And they are contributing the bulk of technical work for the distribution, such that GNOME is actually a more meaningful term for it than Linux (which "GNU" never was).
  - dfc 14y ago
    "And yes, you can basically get a complete distribution from GNOME these days, although you're better off going through one of the real distros. And they are contributing the bulk of technical work for the distribution, such that GNOME is actually a more meaningful term for it than Linux (which "GNU" never was)." Either a "complete distribution" means something different to you or you can't be serious? I know very little about this "gnome distribution" or the bulk of the technical efforts that went into it. What version of the kernel is used? Do they include any distro maintained patches for the kernel or is it pristine linux-stable? What package management system is gnome using for their distribution? Is the default compiler in the Gnome distribution llvm or gcc? How do they handle the installation of ruby gems or python eggs? Upstart, systemd, or plain old init?

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

Why is Stallman still BDFL if he hasn't contributed a meaningful amount of code in years? Let him be the spokesperson so he gets the attention he desperately needs and leave the coding standards to people who code.

dalke 14y ago
The FSF isn't about coding standards, its foremost about moral and ethical standards. Edit: Oops! You mean BFDL for GNU, as compared to the FSF. That's a good question - should Stallman relinquish GNU leadership? What is the replacement plan should something happen to him? I don't think that recent hands-on code experience necessarily plays a role in either case.
piqufoh 14y ago
Agreed, but by definition BDFL is FL - For Life.
- sigzero 14y ago
  I actually never heard that he was BDFL. I thought that only applied to Guido and Python.
  - callmevlad 14y ago
    John Gruber considers himself to be the BDFL of Markdown [1], though many question the 'B' part. [1] http://www.mail-archive.com/markdown-discuss@six.pairlist.net/msg02703.html http://www.mail-archive.com/markdown-discuss@six.pairlist.ne...
PuercoPop 14y ago
I agree wholeheartedly, as Eben Moglen succintly put it in Die Gedanken Sind Frei: "The revolution runs on working code". Those write the code, make the shots. Free Software is a push effort. http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/berlin-keynote.html http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/berlin-keynote....
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deleted 14y ago

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dfc 14y ago

I have been a FSF supporter for a very long time. That being said I have never understood why the gnu-prog-discuss mailing list is so secretive. I can understand having restrictions on posting but I have bever heard a good argument for keeping the discussions behind closed doors. I do not think SPI has any cabalistic mailing lists.

bonzini 14y ago
It's secretive because "GNU is not about openness". I personally believe it's okay to have a "cabalistic" mailing list, the problems are: 1) that the open mailing lists (bug-standards, gnu-system-discuss) are basically unused; 2) that rms is trying to make some topics (e.g., discussing if something could be used as a GPL loophole) taboo even for gnu-prog-discuss.
- tonfa 14y ago
  > rms is trying to make some topics (e.g., discussing if something could be used as a GPL loophole) taboo even for gnu-prog-discuss. Might not be a bad idea, since those discussions could be used after discovery as part of a trial.
  - belorn 14y ago
    If the problem is the discussion about loopholes, than why not just create a second mailing list about that topic and leave the other ones open?
    - rbanffy 14y ago
      Because what you discuss on a closed list can still be used as evidence.

piqufoh 14y ago

If GNU BDFL is not supported by the community, and he wields his power unwisely, then maybe it is time for a fork - GNOME?

rwg 14y ago
Except GNOME is a GNU project (the "G" in "GNOME" used to stand for "GNU"). This point was driven home about three years ago when RMS descended from upon high to decree that posts mentioning non-free software shouldn't be allowed on GNOME's blog aggregator, Planet GNOME. Coincidentally, it was around this time that people started making noise about splitting GNOME off from GNU...

vsbuffalo 14y ago

I really like the elephant and gazelle argument. I am a huge emacs proponent and I love using it, but I feel like it need to be forked and gutted. The whole beauty of an extensible editor is that extensions should be optional. Including more shit each release is not justifiable.

kindahero 14y ago
> but I feel like it need to be forked and gutted. There is Xemacs FYI.. > Including more shit each release is not justifiable. Maintainers have indeed plans to split the packages out of the core, as the package manager is already up and running..
bonzini 14y ago
That was not a technical argument (slow, etc.) It's about the structure of the project.

peripetylabs 14y ago

nullc 14y ago
But the polar opposite where companies like qualcomm are aggressively patenting techniques their employees 'contribute' to LLVM/CLANG with nary a suggestion of offering licensing that makes it lawful for anyone to use... thats okay? What the FSF does has its costs and limitations, but when the mobile patent war spreads to LLVM and renders it unusable except in the underground and by a few large patent mongers, we'll be thankful for the FSF's licensing stewardship on GCC and the rest of the GNU projects.
- justincormack 14y ago
  Well the Apache license protects against that too.
- DannyBee 14y ago
  LLVM's developer policy requires any developers contributing patented code to non-assert any patents with that code. This is particularly true if they work for companies. If you know of places where this is not occurring, or people are contributing code that is being aggressively patented, please email me personally and i'll make sure it gets taken care of. Also note that assignment does not fix anything related to patents. You seem to be confusing contributor agreements in general with copyright assignments.
binarycrusader 14y ago
I disagree. Copyright assignment is appropriate for some projects and not others. The mistake many people make is assuming that it should always happen or never happen. Some projects owe part of their success to copyright assignment, like Ogre3D.

juddlyon 14y ago

I wouldn't characterize that as a rant, Rails is a Ghetto was a rant. This was more of a reasoned venting. Too bad though, the guy seems like he's poured a lot of himself into these projects (from an outsider looking in).

w1ntermute 14y ago
Rails is a Ghetto, for those who haven't read it: http://web.archive.org/web/20080103072111/http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html http://web.archive.org/web/20080103072111/http://www.zedshaw... A classic rant by Zed Shaw.
- crag 14y ago
  I love that rant. I still (re)read it. Gives me a few laughs every time.
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  This is probably a more complete version: http://web.archive.org/web/20090107030956/http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html http://web.archive.org/web/20090107030956/http://www.zedshaw... (I haven't yet read that piece)

belorn 14y ago

I find the "rant" and the linked post by Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos sadly missing any direct details over what the actual issues are. From reading it, one could get the idea that all the problem stems from GNU coding standard being archaic and not updated for modern programming. Okey, I am skipping all the rant about FSF not funding software projects to pay developers, or that the GNU brand is not "hot", but both feels a bit silly. The hotness of a brand is transient, and in reality, only a handful number of brands inspires users and developers. I can't see how GNU would be more or less hot than say Gnome, KDE, or apache which each has a large number of projects under them. As for funding, since when did any of those organizations actually fund the projects? They role is provide help in setting up funding systems, help with tax declarations and provide further legal help. Thankfully, the last link in the end (http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/529522/854aed3fb6398b79/ http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/529522/854aed3fb6398b79/) looks to bring some light of what the actually issues really are: copyright assignments being US only, who the "owner" of a community project is, Nikos' feeling that he aren't getting any tangible benefits from being under the name GNU, and last a request for more transparency in the GNU projects decision process. As for those reasons, there are two I agree with and two I don't. Firstly, Copyright assignments being US only is bad and shows an inflexibility a non-profit foundation should not have. Their role is to help projects, and thus should be as flexible as possible and thus provide equal possibility to assign copyright to US or EU. Second, as for who the owner of a community project is, the answer should stare the developers in the face. It should always be the community (developers and users) that "own" the project and decides its fate. If Nikos' announcement had included a decision by the community (preferable in a transparent manner), it would had been hard for GNU to object. Third, Nikos' feeling that he aren't getting any tangible benefits from GNU are his to have, but legal assistance is something many projects value. If a project has no need for legal assistance, no need for help in creating donation systems, and don't feel a threat about lawsuits against individual developers, then a foundation such as GNU, Apache or other similar organization are not going to give much tangible benefits. Fourth, in regard to more transparency in the GNU projects decision process, I can only agree with Nikos. The corner pillar in a community is transparency, and GNU should be fully aware of this. If there are discontent growing because of an lack of transparency, it should be addressed and fixed with high priority.

14y ago

cmccabe 14y ago

I wonder if his copyright assignment agreement also covered the assignment of trademarks. The name of the project, which seems to be the thing under dispute, would certainly fall under that umbrella rather than copyright law. On the other hand, GNU might have a pretty strong case that including the word "GNU" in the name without being actually affiliated with them would be misleading. I have to say, cases like this really point out the flaws in copyright assignment. It just doesn't make sense from a developer's perspective. If you put in the work to create the code, why would you allow someone else to control the licensing and the name? With proprietary software, the reason is clear-- in exchange for money. But with open source or free software, you really have nothing to gain from copyright assignment, and a lot to lose. If you disagree with whatever the GPLv4 ends up being (or v5, or v6...), your only option is to fork the codebase and choose a new name. Experience has shown that renaming the project loses most of the userbase (think OpenOffice vs. LibreOffice.) This just isn't right. Developers should have a say in how their code is used-- they should be consulted when the code is going to be relicensed.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

dasht 14y ago

For a time I too was the maintainer for GNU sed. Part of that time I was paid by the FSF for that work (this was a long time ago, when the FSF had a small staff working directly on the Hurd and GNU). When I started, GNU sed was very incompatible with the relatively new Posix standard for sed. When I finished, it was less incompatible. It was during this same time that I started work on a new regexp engine for sed but that was not done by the time I stopped work on sed. From that position I was able to observe fairly closely how the GNU project was being led, technically, in the days before the Linux kernel had had any real impact. RMS's technical leadership was, I think, not very skilled. Let me explain what I mean: If you were working on a program and sought his advice, he was very good at zeroing in on the issues and giving excellent advice. And sometimes if you were working on a program and he noticed something he didn't like about your approach, his criticisms were very good. People used to tell stories about how good a programmer he was and those stories were basically all true. He was sharp and I assume that, in spite of his age, he still is. The problem was that he showed no effective capacity to really lead the larger meta project of pulling together a complete OS. He tried -- with projects like autoconf and documents like the GNU coding standards. And he kept a list of programs that, once we had those (he reckoned) along with a kernel -- GNU would be "done". That was about the extent of his "big picture" for project management. Mainly, he concentrated on advocating for the idea of software freedom. I think the gambit was that if enough people demand their freedom, the project of organizing a GNU project would become easier. I don't think this gambit worked. That was never a clear enough, coherent enough, or informed enough vision of the complete GNU project and, consequently, GNU has never really successfully gelled. You can grab some "100% libre" distributions, these days, but only barely. There is no sustainable culture and technical organization there ("yet", I hope). The RMS failure I see is a failure at being a community organizer of GNU programmers. A lot of people got the vague idea of a GNU project. Many of us were happily recruited to the goal. But everyone I worked with at the FSF, including me, kind of went off in various incoherent directions -- doing what we guessed would help and that seemed interesting to us. We never "pulled together as a team" and, in the GNU project, that still doesn't happen. The GNU project gradually accumulated a heck of a lot of very good "parts" but could never gel. The first three world-changing releases (GDB, GCC, and Emacs) really startled people. The various shell/text utilities in those early days spread because they were often usefully a little bit better than the proprietary "native" equivalents shipped by Sun, Dec, AT&T, etc. People sat up and took notice but behind the scenes the project of setting up a lasting "complete OS" project that would promote software freedom for all users ... never quite came together. The "open source" people -- who I also later worked for, because I made a mistake in trusting them at their personal word to me -- seemed at first like they might help bring resources to the problem. In fact, what they mostly concentrated on was creating proprietary products using the free software "parts" from the incomplete GNU project. In the early days they sought to monopolize some of the key labor for the GNU project (and they succeeded, because they paid much better than RMS and many of those particular hackers didn't really give a shit about the freedom of users). As the "open source" industry matured it perfected its model of a perpetually incomplete / inadequate free software OS as a source of inspiration to enthusiastic youngsters, realized in practioce as a perpetually freedom-denying set of proprietary OS products. Companies like Red Hat and Canonical realized that they could exploit the deficit of community organizing to charge high rents for libre software, so long as they don't care seriously about the freedom of users. That's what they did and what they do. So in my view, RMS was not good (and still is not good) at leading the GNU project -- but the real tragedy is brought on by the glad-handing, deep-pocketed, "open source" rentiers who place concern for their own profit above the freedom of the community.

chernevik 14y ago

All disagreements aside, I'm deeply grateful for the efforts made to maintain and extend tools like sed. I can't help see posts like this and worry about the perpetuation of open source, and wish I had the chops to do more to help. As I write I'm downloading a Raspberry Pi image for my son's hardware. I'm getting him an Arduino, a soldering iron and a book for Christmas. I'm looking forward to learning along with him. I don't claim to understand the particular flows of code or inspiration, but I don't see how those projects happen without open source. I also don't see how the Pi happens without industrial scale chip production. As I understand the matter, the Pi was developed by Broadcom staff on their own or 20% time, and its production occurs on interstitial time on production lines that could never be justified by a $25 SOIC. Pi is basically a cheap add-on to a massive industrial base. Of course one point of vision is describing a realizable potential not apparent to the rest of us. But vision can and does proceed despite deviations from its perfect realization -- and sometimes is corrected by those deviations. I deeply disagree with RMS' politics, I'm deeply grateful for his technical contributions. I hope the community can always find a way forward.

epistasis 14y ago
> I can't help see posts like this and worry about the perpetuation of open source, and wish I had the chops to do more to help. I wouldn't worry about open source, that is thriving and alive. "Free software" is different, and very specialized. I also deeply disagree with RMS, but further I disagree with "free software" being the one true way (though I happily use it), and think that open source is better all around, for everyone. [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.h... [2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

ohnoohno 14y ago

My view: sed does not need to be "extended" nor should it require much maintenance. At least, the BSD sed's I use have not needed much work. I recall Brian Kernighan mentioning how little maintenance awk has required over the years. As such, I fail to see why changing maintainers is newsworthy. Perhaps someone was looking for an excuse to state their opinions on other matters? I'll be honest I could not understand what Mr Bonzini is trying to say anymore than I could understand Mr Stallman's antics in the recent YouTube clip. With all due respect, what are these people on about? What is the problem? Clearly and succinctly, please.

bonzini 14y ago
Just as an example of extending sed, I introduced "sed -i". Yes, it doesn't require much maintenance, but sometimes you can be surprised. I started maintaining GNU grep 3 years ago because it was in a really sorry state. Some parts were almost rewritten to make it faster and more correct.
- ohnoohno 14y ago
  I never use sed -i because I can't rely on that being a standard feature as I move from system to system. With a utility as basic as sed that is found on almost every UNIX (and hence often used in a system's startup or configuration scripts, etc.), I want my own sed scripts to work consistently across all systems I might use. If I really want to create temp files I can use ed or use sed with shell redirection. Were it for some reason a requirement, I can avoid temp files, at least for the substitution (s) command, as follows: sed -a '"$1"';H;$!d;g;w'$2 where $1 is some sed s commands and $2 is a file This is not "perfect" as there will blank lines, but it does the job without temp files (if that were really a concern). If GNU grep was in need of repair and you fixed it, then I thank you. But I'm not clear on how that justifies any "extensions" to GNU grep. Maintenance, at least to me, means fixing things, not extending them and adding more complexity and things that can potentially break or create incompatibilities across different UNIX's.
  - kroger 14y ago

nnq 14y ago

> It is likely not possible to convince a diverse group such as the group of GNU maintainers to agree on coding standards for C++ ...bluntly asking: why? (In any closed-source C++ project, if someone writes a "style guide and coding standard" thing and the project manager supports it, people start writing "compliant" code, grunting or moaning at first but they do, and then it becomes part of "company culture" and people find it natural to write code by it - I believe with Google's C++ was like this too... why does it has to be harder for an open source project?)

tomprince 14y ago
That was exactly the point being made. That things like coding standards often need somebody to make a decision and enforce it, and that RMS didn't do that.

ilaksh 14y ago

I believe that MIT/BSD/Apache-style licenses are not only better for business but also better for developers and better for users than GPL-ish licenses. If we get to a point where people don't have to make money, then maybe GPLish will be better. I think that in a way the GPL and older code bases are just a less evolved and less practical tradition. If I'm wrong, please explain to me why I'm wrong, because I would like to know.