Re: systemd^wfoo on linux, bar on bsd,so what (Re: /bin/sh

[Dmitrijs Ledkovs <xnox@debian.org>]

On 22 May 2013 03:32, Paul Tagliamonte <paultag@ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 01:16:29AM +0100, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote:
>> I have signed Canonical's and Python Software Foundation's contributor
>> agreements.
>> But I have no intention to assign copyright to FSF at the moment,
>> given it's past well documented bad practices at doing things for the
>> sake of it, instead of benefit of the wider free software community.
>
> The FSF's end goal is Free Software[1], whereas Canonical's is cold,
> hard, cash. Nothing wrong with that, but you have to admit that they
> don't really care about ideology or ethics, but providing a distro
> people will use (and buy services / devices / support for).
>
> I don't see how you can see the FSF as worse than Canonical in terms of
> respecting your code and end user freedom.
>
> Relatedly, the PSF is great.
>
> I responded with my Ubuntu address to drive this point home clearly - I
> support what Canonical and Ubuntu are doing; so much, in fact, I've
> spent over 5 years of my life helping make that happen.
>
> That being said, I don't grok your argument.
>
> [1]: OK. Not Free Software as such, but Free Software as a means to an
>      end -- namely, free users.
>

My stance is reverse. IMHO Canonical has done more to promote free
software among people, companies, businesses, non-for-profits,
governments and NGOs than any other free software company or
organisation. It can be seen from the amount of pre-installed machines
shipped with Ubuntu from all Tier-1 hardware vendors and many other
smaller hardware vendors. Oracle is a company with a "cold, hard,
cash" goal. Canonical whilst striving to be self-sustaining, evidently
spends most of its profits/money on new Research&Development be it
Linaro, Unity, Juju or the SaaS offerings like U1 & Landscape suite of
services. Some produce more open source software than others, and all
of these will be ranked differently by each person differently, am I
still yet to be screwed by Canonical's projects. Please correct me if
I am wrong, but none of Canonical CA covered projects yet to (a)
change their license or (b) go proprietary. Since Canonical's CA
inception, it has been modified to grant less rights to canonical and
counter keep more to the authors, thus adjusting the balance based on
community feedback. And more and more software is released as open
source. Contrast with what Oracle has been doing in the past years.

FSF on the other hand:
* GFDL fiasco - because clearly the world cannot live another day
without RMS essay, and oh my one shouldn't generate GCC documentation
from code comments
* SSL licensing - the combination of gnutls going v3 & v3 still being
incompatible with OpenSSL and/or v2
* Clang/LLVM - moving gcc to v3 & thus making Apple contribute/develop
LLVM instead of continuing to use gcc (/me is on gcc camp, thus it's
fsf's negative point. Others might cheer for this move, which gave the
birth to Clang, eventually)
* GNU Project mismanagement/micromanagement - (GnuTLS & sed & others)
https://lwn.net/Articles/529522/  https://lwn.net/Articles/530460/
These are just a few grudges I have against FSF.

I like FSF EU division though.

As you say, "Relatedly, the PSF is great". So CA alone, is really not
a cause or reason for one's actions. In general, I like CAs as it
assigns liability to a 3rd party that can afford lawyers.

Regards,

Dmitrijs.