Re: Announce: new EchoLink Howto
w9ya wrote:
Perhaps. But for others a single distro is a problem. I doubt it would make
much difference to anyone to offer it up on Red Hat (or whatever) and still
make it available otherwise.
Jump on in and help "us" port it properly to Debian as another
"recommended platform" and then we can work on Dave together to give him
friendly grief about the source being closed! Heh. :-)
Alot of stuff requires tweaking to run on Debian....grin.
LOL! True... true... and that's probably a GOOD thing. :-)
Seriously, the point I was making was that the "authors" were making silly
claims (silly to me that is) as to why they made the "closed-source" choice
they made.
Just a guess here, but that sounds similar to the "standard" response
one particular person gives that I'm pretty sure was there.
Dave Cameron has literally been attacked by open-source zealouts in the
past, who have no interest in helping out -- just whining -- so
sometimes the question is dodged a bit by claiming the "security" of the
network. My take on it anyway...
I'm not sure it's the best response, but the real response (as you saw
from my obnoxiously long post...) is pretty complicated.
Some people are downright MEAN when it comes to being zealous about Free
Software. Dave's not highly endeared to Free Software after an early
zealout got really really personal and mean with him in e-mail. I can't
say I blame him much.
Or maybe it's not complex really -- Dave just doesn't want to deal with
licensing, releasing his code, or anything else, like supporting
multiple platforms that would go with that... but if you have a node
you're free to poke around and do what you want with it.
It's not GPL-Nirvana, but it's sure better than the completely closed
source binaries of some "competing" technolgies on other operating
systems. Progress... progress...
Someday someone will want to do a big project to do a fully open one...
I'll be there when that happens, pitching in!
Nothing more except that I will not want to look at code that isn't available
under a license that allows me to look at it freely without any restrictions
related to my looking at it. I was left with the impression that it was not
under an "open" license format.
Fair enough! :-)
Thanxs for your insight.
Heck, I just mop up around here, I don't know what's going on, man!
Heh! I'm just an official Internet Janitor (System Administrator) for a
living! Hmmm... or is that BOFH for a living? ;-)
73 OM, Nate WY0X
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