Hi Alexandro, Alexandro Colorado wrote:
FSF launched a statement about pushing free-only listing for OOo extensions. They approach the community counsil and was rejected according to a post on LWN.net. I want to express my support for FSF since is a reasonable petition and also trivially done in drupal by using categories. http://lwn.net/Articles/386838/
See the answer here http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=417
From the article, it ask for: The FSF asked the OpenOffice.org Community Council to list only free software extensions, or to provide a second independent listing which only included free extensions, but they declined to change their policy.
Please understand the FSF requirements in more detail and you'll see they are not as trivially to fulfill as you might think. I can only guess what you mean by "using categories". But a list "by license category" was not agreeable as solution.
They didn't list the response from the CC, which I would much interested in knowing about why did the Counsil didn't comply. If it was a resources issue, or was it just that they didnt felt they want to do it. I would like to express that I want to support the free-only listing in the extension webpage (not eliminate the non-free but label it as non-free). And be able to offer a clear Free-only option on the left side of the menu, next to Highest rated, Most Popular etc
The request was to delete non-free extensions or to run separate repositories or to use fully separated partitions without crosslinks. The link "By License" is in place now. But as said it does not satisfy the FSF's need.
Update: I did some look up and found that maybe there was a missunderstanding of sorts and that maybe FSF contradict itself by asking an alternative listing and the wording about creating a different repository vs creating a different listing. "Extensions Repository The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has notified the CC that the OOo Extensions Repository does not conform to FSF principles, as it hosts ‘non-free’ software. As a result, any software distributions wishing to conform to FSF standards should not make use of the OOo Repository. The CC agreed that licence information could be improved on the Repository, as this is an important factor people should consider when choosing extensions. The FSF would be welcomed to help in providing this sorting / filtering mechanism. However, the CC would not support a forking or partitioning of the Repository to exclude ‘non-free’ extensions. OOo respects the right of its users to make their own informed choice of software, and believes this is best achieved by a single Repository offering a full selection of extensions. " I guess this is just a bad PR move, on the wording from both parties. A proposal could have been more clear on how to go about it. But just saying that "licensing could be improved" sound like passive observation rather than something to look into.
As one first step you find now the "By License" link. The mention of the license in the description could be worked on to make the used license more clear in some cases. Furthermore there are extensions where the license is not clearly mentioned and needs clarification. You are welcome to help us with the on the Drupal implementation or by contacting authors of extensions in the "not specified" category. But as it has been discussed this still does not satisfy what the FSF asked for.
So we (FSF, OOo CC incl. Extensions Project Lead) had to agree that the requirements resulting from the FSF mission are too restrictive for the OpenOffice.org extension repository.
For follow-ups I would recommend to use the webs...@extensions list. Greetings Stefan --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
