As someone who collects information about 'open source' games I can say it was once very decentralized and that makes things very, very difficult. Some guy in college makes a game and posts it on his page within the colleges website. 12 people play it, they all go on to found their own game development companies. Meanwhile the guy graduates, his website eventually gets deleted, game disappears forever. Decentralizing and sharing source didn't help. Sure, a for-profit company having control over source code archives does have it's drawbacks. But profit making can also hold them to a minimal level of caring about the developers who use their site think. Sure, Google closed their code hosting project, but they gave everyone ample warning it was coming. Would have been nice if the colleges had done the same for their students websites, but where was their incentive to do so?
On Sat, Oct 17, 2015 at 9:00 AM, < [email protected]> wrote: > Send libreplanet-discuss mailing list submissions to > [email protected] > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > [email protected] > > You can reach the person managing the list at > [email protected] > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of libreplanet-discuss digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. The GNU ethical repository criteria will only harm free > software. (Robert Call (Bob)) > 2. Re: The GNU ethical repository criteria will only harm free > software. (Mary-Anne Wolf) > 3. Re: The GNU ethical repository criteria will only harm free > software. (Robert Call (Bob)) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2015 08:31:03 -0400 > From: "Robert Call (Bob)" <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Subject: [libreplanet-discuss] The GNU ethical repository criteria > will only harm free software. > Message-ID: <1445085063.2021.1.camel@Gilda> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > In the free software community, we are already faced with some very > critical problems that need to be addressed sooner rather than later, > with the number continuously growing all of the time. One of these > critical problems involves the way free software source code is hosted > and shared with the community. > > In the recent past, some may remember that gitorious, a large host of > free software source code repositories for a number of projects, was > sold to a company who has has a record of not acting in the best > interest of the free software community. Gitorious was folded and many > projects were left without a place to host source code. The same can be > said for the non-free Google Code which became defunct a few months ago. > > Another example of a hosting provider gone bad was sourceforge. While > sourceforge was not free software in of itself, its parent company was > sold long ago and now acts against the interests of its users and those > who host free software projects there. Sadly, sourcefoge is still home > to quite a few critical pieces of free software. > > We are now at a point where it is quite difficult to trust many pieces > of free software[1] due to the fact that many use centralized hosting > providers, like github, who could be bad actors or censor source code > [2]. The centralization problem combined with the fact that most free > software developers don't sign their code is a disaster and we can't put > this issue off any longer. Even if developers did sign their code, these > centralized hosts could easily manipulate repositories if they chose to > do so since most who checkout source code don't fully check the code > that they are getting. > > While I'm not fully against giving grade letters to various source code > hosting providers, it is not solving the real issues that we are now > faced with. We can't continue to endorse any one centralized place to > host source code unless we want to continue to repeat history and make > this issue more critical. > > To fix this, we need to: > > * advocate for individual projects to host their own source code > repositories > > * make decentralized source code repositories more sane > > * Create tools to help decentralize these repositories (something like > gittorrent). > > * draft a set of standards / practices to help fix the issue where > developers don't sign their source code. > > > With this, I hope that someone will listen and help some of us fix these > issues. > > [1] While it is free software and can be reviewed, the point is that > many of us don't have the time to fully audit these pieces that are not > properly singed or see if they have been tampered with. > > [2] Repositories on github have been subject to removal due to DMCA > takedown notices or governments getting involved. > > -- > Robert Call (Bob) > [email protected] > http://librecmc.org > > > -------------- next part -------------- > A non-text attachment was scrubbed... > Name: signature.asc > Type: application/pgp-signature > Size: 819 bytes > Desc: This is a digitally signed message part > URL: < > http://lists.libreplanet.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/attachments/20151017/e76cd0d5/attachment.pgp > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2015 14:59:25 +0000 (UTC) > From: Mary-Anne Wolf <[email protected]> > To: "Robert Call (Bob)" <[email protected]> > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [libreplanet-discuss] The GNU ethical repository criteria > will only harm free software. > Message-ID: > <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > > You suggested something "like" gittorrent. > How would this differ from gittorrent? > > Mary-Anne > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2015 11:38:33 -0400 > From: "Robert Call (Bob)" <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [libreplanet-discuss] The GNU ethical repository criteria > will only harm free software. > Message-ID: <1445096313.2384.13.camel@Gilda> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > On Sat, 2015-10-17 at 14:59 +0000, Mary-Anne Wolf wrote: > > You suggested something "like" gittorrent. > > How would this differ from gittorrent? > > > > Mary-Anne > > The issue is that the GNU project / FSF is proposing to give grades to > various places that host free software source code repositories and > endorse a few. We need to stop endorsing centralized solutions and > develop standards for free software projects to host their own > repositories or use / develop tools that aid projects in doing so. > Developing standards is the important part of this because most projects > don't host their own code in a secure way and they don't sign their code > in a verifiable way. > > The whole point I was making is that the GNU project / FSF should not be > repeating the whole process of endorsing one or a few centralized places > to host free software projects. The free software community has gone > through the failure of centralized source code repository hosts several > times and I'm sure it will happen a few more if we keep up this cycle. I > only brought up gittorrent because it seemed close to what I was > thinking of, but other tools are needed to make it work. > > -- > Robert Call (Bob) > [email protected] > http://librecmc.org > -------------- next part -------------- > A non-text attachment was scrubbed... > Name: signature.asc > Type: application/pgp-signature > Size: 819 bytes > Desc: This is a digitally signed message part > URL: < > http://lists.libreplanet.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/attachments/20151017/5b85da1e/attachment.pgp > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > libreplanet-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss > > > End of libreplanet-discuss Digest, Vol 68, Issue 9 > ************************************************** > -- Viruses, Malware, CD-Keys, product activation codes, systems crashes, hours of installing software, uninstalling demo programs you'll never use, unconstitutional license agreements that destroy our Human freedoms, all are obsolete <http://www.ubuntu.com>. Install it and fix Windows forever. If you like, you can even keep your old Windows with all those problems; it'll run side-by-side. Oh and there's over 7600 games available < http://www.uvlist.net/search?ftag=-notlinux&fplat=106&sort=pop&ipp=c>. Is that more than Mac? I think it is.
