[Nano-devel] how about merge with alpine-pico?

[张韡武]

Dear all

I am sure I am not the first one got this idea: WU had decided to use an
non-Free license. They did it in such a way that they lost reputation of
pico and pine and use of both are declined in Free software world. Now
they had learned their lesson and their new license for alpine is fine
with Debian Free Software Guidelines.

It is Chris' own wish that one day UW would change their license, as
written in the FAQ many many year ago, that he accepts the project merge
with pine if UW changes their license. Do we need two pico-style editors
because one of them is not free? Yes. Now both are free, does the world
need two free software pico-style editors? No. A very small percentage
people might need a GPL version of pico, these are people who might
think every software should have a GPL version if it didn't born that
way.

So did anyone consider a merge with pine, after so many years? This is a
happy ending for both projects, as nano now is no longer actively
maintained and alpine just started a new life with a new license, at the
right direction.

It can be a merge that pico simply joins the alpine project (could be
difficult because of copyright issue, both organization in history
showed their strength in not easily compromise), or alpine abandon the
idea of having their own editor, in turn depends on gnu nano (not a
shame! There are far too many software depends on gnu stuff) and provide
patch to nano to cope with their new requirements.

I am not faimiliar with both projects, but I remembered it very well
that Christ waited and waited, hoped and hoped to see an free software
version of pico. So when I see WU finally made a turn, I didn't hasitate
to subscribe this list and see opinions of other people. A merge (either
nano joins alpine or alpine depends on nano) would be benificial to end
users because they get some products with more development support and
the projects avoided splitting resources for two editors and focus on
one only, when there are not so much resources (maybe none for nano)
available.

Best regards. And may nano project live forever, in this way or another.

I knew a typical reply would say that it's the user's decision if they
configure alpine to use nano as default editor, which is in fact saying
"that's none of our business". Such reply is not a reply to the point I
am talking. I am talking about co-operation and make full use of
resource, reputation here; I am not talking about competition. 'Let user
decide' would make sense for competiting projects, but do we have a
reason to compete over to co-operate? If you allowe me to, I'd also wish
to try communicate with alpine to see their opinion. They knew their
product pico lagged behind during these years of development and might
be open to new ideas on bring more to end users.

Zhang Weiwu