Re: upstart: please update to latest upstream version
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:
> [1] Examples: MySQL as the "default" database for lots of projects;
> Sleepycat/BDB as the backend for plenty of software, sometimes chosen
> over GDBM; Qt; fox of ice and fire; and probably countless others that
> don't come to mind because nobody really seemed to give this a whole lot
> of thought until it was Canonical's name on the copyright statement...
I think this is a little bit unfair, in that I know I'm not the only one
who's cared about this since long before Canonical existed. The annoyance
with the FSF's copyright assignment policies is long-standing.
I don't think it's a reason to keep the software out of Debian, but it
does mean that there are a bunch of projects to which I will not
contribute packages and which I will not help. That doesn't mean I won't
use them, or even package them, but it means that I won't contribute
upstream patches (at least unless upstream will make exceptions to the
contributor agreement).
This is only partly out of a feeling of principle. It's largely because
most of my free software work is done as part of my job at Stanford, and
Stanford University is unwilling to sign these sorts of agreements.
This has practical impact when picking *core* technology for the project.
We're chronically short on manpower, and excluding a bunch of Debian
Developers from contributing to the project up-front is not a great idea.
That said, the same issue applies to, e.g., GCC, and we're of course still
using GCC as our compiler.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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