[Savannah-hackers] Re: The matter of GIFs

[Dan Kuykendall (Seek3r)]

"Bradley M. Kuhn" wrote:
> 
> Loic Dachary updated me on some of the situation about discussing GIF's in
> phpGroupWare, and I had a conversation this afternoon with Dan about it.
> 
> I first want to express my apologies if I failed to express the GNU stance
> on GIFs clearly when Dan and I had our long discussions about whether or
> not phpGroupWare would become a GNU package.  There was clearly a
> miscommunication, and for that I am sorry.  (I have updated the
> maintainers guide to include information about this issue so future
> confusions can be averted.)

This was unfortuante, but we are all human and make mistakes. I also did
not ask enough about the issue... I just didnt think it would be an
issue.

> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html outlines the GNU project policy on
> GIFs.  As Dan mentioned, it likely isn't patent infringement to ship GIF
> files.  However, the GNU project doesn't do it so as to make people aware
> of the issue of software patents, and thus we never include GIFs as part
> of an official GNU package distribution.

Now that we more fully understand your position and have had time to
debate/discuss/argue over the situation for awhile we have finally made
a decision.
As I have mentioned I agree with the FSF that software patents are bad.
However I have also stated that I dont have a huge problem with the gif
patent in particular because it is only in the creation of gifs, and it
expires in only 2 years.

As mentioned, we have debated this long and hard and the final outcome
is that the team is not willing to go thru the hassle of taking out gifs
out of our cvs tree and tar/zip releases. There are several reasons why.
1) Its a hassle for developers and users alike
2) The default release would look less appealing in most browsers, and
could impact adoption.
3) The gif issue isnt something we are so pationate about that we can
stand behind it to the impact of our baby (phpGW).
4) There is the perception that the FSF has asked too much in the short
time we have have been a GNU project. Kind of the last straw sort of
thing.
I had really tried to make it reasonable to follow your rules, and
offered up several possible solutions... but I cannot force the team to
do what they dont want to.

> I sympathize that the PNG files look atrocious when used for certain
> things.  Many times, we at the GNU Project find that to take an ethical
> stand requires real sacrifice for the ascetics that are important to us as
> designers and programmers.
>
> But in the end, it is a question of values.  Ascetics and good design are
> important, but for the GNU project, the ethical principles of software
> freedom have to remain more important.  For this reason, we are asking you
> to stick with the GNU project and remove the GIF files from the
> phpGroupWare distribution.

If we felt it was a critical issue, then we would stand by you on
principle.. but we dont and wont on this issue. I am sorry.

> It isn't easy to take these ethical stands, but they are at the heart of
> what the GNU project is.  phpGroupWare is fast becoming one of the most
> important packages in the GNU project, since savannah depends on it, and
> since the FSF office staff will probably soon be using phpGroupWare for
> calendaring and scheduling.
>
> I would hate to see a disagreement about this matter to harm the
> relationship between the GNU project as a whole and phpGroupWare.  I am
> excited and happy to be working with you and want the relationship to
> continue.  Since you've recently affiliated further as a subproject of
> DotGNU, that means even more interest and integration GNU-wide with
> phpGroupWare.

I hope we can still work with the GNU project, if not as a GNU project
at least with DotGNU and GNUe.
I believe we still have alot to offer GNU users, and really aside from
this GIF issue, we are all fighting to create terrific Free Software.

> I realize that the phpGroupWare team has been asked to make a lot of
> sacrifices for our ethics, such as back-porting to PHP3 and the
> still-pending Kylix issue.  Since you develop a package of wide scope and
> importance, more of these ethical issues are likely to come up here than
> with other GNU packages.  You are and will continue to be asked to be
> leaders for championing the ethics of the GNU project, and that means some
> amount of sacrifice.

I hope you keep in mind that we have done everything else asked of us.
We maintain PHP3 support for both Freedom and wide adoption reasons. We
have kept all our code under GPL/LGPL licensing and helped boycott
SourceForge because of VA Software's change of policy and actions with
their source code. We seperated the Klyix code from the main project
because there is no Free borland compiler and our Klyix client would
then be dependant on proprietary software.
We stand by Freedom, if not perfectly aligned with you... very close.

> I hope that you all choose to stick with the GNU project and follow this
> albeit painful policy for the sake of ethics.  I hear lots of people
> adopting and talking about phpGroupWare, and I am always proud to say that
> the phpGroupWare developers chose to join the GNU project.  I hope you'll
> decide to continue the affiliation.

As mentioned, we are not going to be willing to remove all gifs from our
project.
If you choose to deny us GNU status, then we are going to have to accept
that. I assume that if we lose GNU status, then we will be required to
leave Savannah. If this is the case, please give us time to organize a
move to our own servers and we will self host the services/applications.

I hope that we can still work with Loic and Savannah on the next version
of Savannah. Since it will be a trival matter to create a gif'less
package of phpgrouwpare with a simple find|rm of all gif files, Savannah
should have no problems with the GIF issue and using our codebase.
In fact, development might move faster, since we would likely use phpGW
to maintain our own needs for those tools.

I also hope that we can continue with DotGNU, since again, a gif'less
version of phpGW will be a trivial matter to create, and I plan to
create gifless tar/zip packages with each release along with the link to
the gnu.org no gif page to explain why we do that.

Additionally... 2 years goes by fast. Seems like yesterday that we
started phpGW, and now its nearly two years later. two years from now
the gif issue will be dead, PNG support in browsers will probably be
much better and phpGroupWare may once again become a GNU project.

Dan Kuykendall (aka Seek3r)
phpgroupWare Project Leader