Re: GR proposal: mandating VcsGit and VcsBrowser for all packages, using the "gbp patches unapplied" layout, and maybe also mandating hosted on Salsa

[Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 12:23:42PM +0000, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> Since use of a public VCS isn't universal among free software projects,
> the implication is that one could take a non-free upstream tarball, dump
> it into git on salsa and magically make it free.  I think this is a
> ridiculous concept.

The concept of "preferred form for modification" is mostly about those who
actually do the work.  If there's an active upstream taking a drive-by
patch, it's the upstream's opinion that matters.

Dumping a tarball into git doesn't restore lost commit messages, patch
history, nor authorship data -- just like you can't un-preprocess C code
(nVidia's "nv" driver comes to mind).

Ie, I consider making matters worse to be worth forbidding; I'm not
proposing declaring old code non-free because it doesn't use techniques
which were not even invented then.


Meow!
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