[Savannah-hackers] GNU and Linux

[Mathieu Roy]

address@hidden wrote:

> Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 19:43:37 -0400
> From: Yaroslav Klyukin <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: [Savannah-hackers] Re: Help wanted (sysadmin work)
> To: Sylvain Beucler <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
> Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> Sylvain Beucler wrote:
>
>> Actually, I think we cannot work efficiently if we cannot first have a  
>> fruitful argument.
>
> I just wanted to spend some of my spare time in order to help you, but 
> instead I have got an ultimatum -
> "Either I accept your philosophy, or your reject to work on any projects 
> with me."
>
> Unfortunately, this is not acceptable to me.
> My goal - is to increase my computer skills, dealing with computer 
> professionals, who you (GNU people) represent. I don't want to get 
> involved in political part of the project - just the the development
> part.

Maybe you would like to contribute instead to the software Savane,
that is currently used at Savannah. See
https://gna.org/projects/savane

Being involved in management of a platform like Savannah, in my
experience (well, two years), is only 50% about technical things. 


>> [Naming an OS]
>> 
>> I can be my OS, yours, or RedHat's, or partialy yours+mine+RedHat's, it  
>> does not justify an improper name, and we encourage people to call it  
>> properly. Is this ok? If not, what makes you think we cannot encourage  
>> people to use the name we think fits better?
>
> We have different understanding of the word "improper".
> In my opinion it is proper for anybody to call his own product any name 
> he wishes as long as it does not interfere with copyright laws.

Well, laws are supposed to reflect a morality, not the contrary. Laws
aren't immutable ; sticking by the book is a good thing when there is
a serious conflict, but that's not exactly the case here, is it?


But anyway, as Sylvain pointed out, GNU already wrote some papers
explaining it's decision, and if you maintain a GNU development
platform, you'll have to stick to it, as least when working working on
it. Indeed, it sounds harsh, since it is like "do what we do or 
leave" but is not like you were forced to do that to live, it is
just something you have to do if you want to contribute to GNU:
contributing to a project means accepting its principles, otherwise it
would be counter-productive for the project.

You can enter a project an try to change how it works, why not, but
you cannot enter it and just disregard its principles. And I can tell
you there is little chance that you convince anybody at GNU to call
GNU/Linux "Linux". :)

-- 
Mathieu Roy

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