Albert, There are many communities out there; some of which have used/use even closed source tools for developing free code. That does not make the code itself any less free.
Using other tools may have other costs, in particular a higher entry cost for contributors, but it doesn't make the resulting software less free. - Jim On Thu, 2008-06-26 at 16:13 -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote: > On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 1:38 PM, Bert Freudenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Am 26.06.2008 um 10:53 schrieb Albert Cahalan: > > > >>>> This idea of applying patch collections is disturbing. It reminds > >>>> me of the terrible mess that Minix was back in 1991, when the > >>>> license permitted people to share patches but not code with > >>>> the patches applied. Here you have a technical limit instead > >>>> of a legal one, but I expect that the result is not much different. > >>> > >> I got that. The fundamental problem is the patch collection. > >> There is a problem even if you can distribute the result. > >> Patches need to be applied. If you do that, and distribute > >> a blob, then we're back to the blob problem. If you don't do > >> that, then we have the Minix problem. > > > > I don't actually disagree with that. Smalltalk is an excellent personal > > computing environment (well, you would expect that from the guys who largely > > invented personal computing). It does not fare nearly as well for > > distributed, collaborative development (although the Squeak community has > > developed work-arounds, like Monticello, a nice distributed SCM). > > > > But: Why should these shortcomings in development style be a reason to not > > include it in a Linux distribution? It's not like if every other app is > > well-coded or well-maintained. > > The very foundation of the Linux development community > (which Squeak developers are asking to be accepted by) > includes an expectation that software can be handled in > certain ways. Any person can browse the source, with the > worst case being that one must download an archive file > or perform a check-out. (better: web git/cvs/svn access) > Any person can use external tools, which themselves are > likewise open, to view/edit/save/create/share the source. > (better: those tools are standard, like emacs/gimp/audacity) > We also expect a certain degree of openness (not a lot of > non-public communication) and a certain degree of modularity > (parts are interchangable across similar projects and versions, > allowing distributions to mix and match). > _______________________________________________ > Devel mailing list > Devel@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Jim Gettys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> One Laptop Per Child _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel