Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-project] eudev project announcement

[Luca Barbato <lu_zero@gentoo.org>]

On 12/15/2012 05:20 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Luca Barbato <lu_zero@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> eudev is a Gentoo project is not Gentoo. Same could be said for OpenRC.
>>
> 
> OpenRC isn't a Gentoo project, at least, it wasn't in the past.
> 
> The social contract defines Gentoo as a collection of free knowledge,
> which includes "free software contributed by various developers to the
> Gentoo Project."  The social contract is meaningless if it doesn't
> apply to Gentoo projects.  Gentoo projects cover all the arch teams,
> portage, and all of our documentation.

That part of the social contract section is resembling really closely
Debian and shares the same clashing issue when Gentoo has to mix with
non-gpl realities such as FreeBSD. We are not going to relicense to GPL
all the software we touch, it would be at least rude.

> Projects are just how we organize the administration of Gentoo. They
> aren't something distinct from Gentoo.  When you work on a Gentoo
> project, you work on Gentoo.

Again, looks like there is a huge misunderstanding on what a project is,
the term is much often overloaded since you have Gentoo, the community
and the distribution and projects fostered by Gentoo.

>> I guess you misunderstood what is Gentoo and what is a Gentoo Project.
>>
> 
> Enlighten us, what is Gentoo, if nothing in any Gentoo project is Gentoo?

See above =)

> What exactly do you think that section of the Social Contract actually
> covers?  Or is it a pretty document we stick on our website but ignore
> when it is somehow inconvenient?

The social contract is meant to assure that we will preserve and
maintain the freedoms we got as foundation the best we could. That
section is clumsy in stating it as is in Debian, agreed.

> As I said, I'm fine with making exceptions if it makes sense and
> furthers the overall mission of Gentoo.

There is no exception to be made.

> However, we shouldn't just ignore the social contract without any kind
> of consideration at all.

Again, the document doesn't really relate to any "Gentoo project" as
expressed as anything different from the distribution as whole.

> If the community doesn't like the social contract we could of course
> consider amending it as well.

Clarifying to avoid such misunderstandings it seems necessary.

> Gentoo isn't GitHub.  When people donate money to Gentoo they're not
> donating so that a club of elite coders can use the infrastructure to
> host just anything that suits their fancy.  The reason that we let any
> Gentoo developer just start a project is because it helps promote
> innovation and cuts through bureaucracy.  That doesn't mean that
> Gentoo holds no interest in the work that is done under its name.

Again, we have a number of projects under permissive licenses since we
DO want work with the BSD community or we rely on software originated by
them, relicensing any software to GPL would be rude and quite pointless.

I'm afraid you are ignoring the fact core libraries should not be GPL to
not hinder adoption. (check which software uses libudev or libgudev and
see how much of it won't work anymore had you relicensed those libraries
to GPL)

> If for whatever reason the fork diverges to a point where we aren't
> giving back in the form of patches to upstream then I'd argue that it
> would make sense to move back to the GPL (something trivially done with
> or without copyright assignment due to the nature of the LGPL).

I'd be happy to consider this once we reach this stage and you are among
the main contributors.

Currently I guess people would be happy to have their udev working as
should.

lu