On Tue 2008-07-15 21:09, bardo wrote: > Hi fellow TUs, devs and archers! > I'm writing this long e-mail to discuss the current situation about > sancho-gtk, a [community] package I'm maintaining. > > I inherited sancho-gtk, a front-end for mldonkey, when mOLOk resigned > from his TU position, and some time ago I checked if everything was ok > with it. In the PKGBUILD I found an ugly hack to download the > software, which is hosted on Sourceforge but isn't available at the > traditional download location. It is rather distributed through a > direct link in its homepage (http://sancho-gui.sourceforge.net/), but > that link changes every few minutes: because of this came the ugly > hack. The whole thing, I discovered, was done on purpose by its > author, whom I contacted for explainations. > > He pointed out that the download page page states "no > redist/pkging/mirrors pls". I don't like forwarding private e-mails, > so here's a summary of what I found out and some of my assumptions. > * The author doesn't like his software to be repackaged because he > doesn't want users complaining upstream for distribution-level bugs. > * He doesn't really care if his user base drops to near-zero because > his software isn't easily available and integrated in linux > distributions. > * I wasn't able to find the application's source code (the GTK > version, at least) on his site, so I assume it is a closed source app. > When the author was asked to clarify his position, include a license > and, in case of a free one, the corresponding source code, he didn't > answer. > * The author thinks software inclusion in a linux distro is "opt-in" > (his words), and states he never asked for it. When I pointed out that > free software has nothing to do with opt-in, he stopped answering my > e-mails. > * The author never clearly stated (even though I asked) if we are > infringing any license by redistributing the software. > * An important phrase I think i just have to report is "I don't think > a license has ever written any software", referring to his preference > of distributing his software only through the homepage. > > I want to drop this software from our repos. Not because he asked for > it, but because it looks like this person doesn't really understand > what free software and a community are, and that we are persons, too, > with our rights. He's not the kind of person I want to deal with. I > also think he is in violation of Sourceforge terms, since he's > maintaining what looks like proprietary software on their servers. > > What do you think about the whole thing? > I already decided to drop both sancho-gtk and mldonkey (its > development seems to be stalled), but there are more questions. Should > I notify him to Sourceforge in case he is infringing? Should I drop > the package to [unsupported]? Should I delete it? Should I hand it to > another maintainer? > I wouldn't want to see another ion3, but I don't think it's very > different. Should we try to define special policies for cases like > these?
As Corrado stated, I was the former maintainer; I'm quite sure sancho-gui *was* licensed under GPL, that's why I moved it [community]. I never understood why the author was trying to make difficult for third party to package his software, but since it was licensed under GPL, I pretty much didn't bother to ask explanations. Since the author explicitly said he doesn't want people packaging his software, I would drop it and inform SourceForge. MLDonkey on the other hand seems to be still developed: http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/mldonkey/mldonkey/distrib/ChangeLog maybe some other TU could adopt it. Cheers, -- Alessio (molok) Bolognino Please send personal email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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