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How about activating the search "via google" Savane feature at Gna! In the past, it was shut off at Savannah because it was considered unacceptable to refer to google that rely on proprietary software, because we were at gnu.org. We are no longer there, so now it is only up to us. There was a consensus against among savannah-hackers -- yes, at a time where savannah-hackers had their say about how Savannah was going, most probably because nobody overseas gave a fuck about it. Jaime thought it was likely to be interpreted "Savannah depends on google's software", and so was against having that search possibility, while mentioning that he himself use frequently google, in a personal context [1]. Loic, while acknowlegding that referring to google was not installing google, expressed concerns about "referring to online services based on non free software", since he thought that "nowadays the disctinction between an online service and a software installed on your machine becomes thiner and thiner" [2]. The fact that I bring the issue here speak for itself. I, personally, am in favor of reactivating that feature. To me, it looks hypocritical to remove that feature and to frequently mimic it by adding site:gna.org in google search, like I do almost every days. I am not convinced that the distinction between online services and software installed in reducing. As long as the online service works is accessible with free software, it looks ok to me: having the server running on purely free software would be nice but it is a distinct issue. It would be different if google was using flash, requesting users to install proprietary software. It would be different if google was using a specific protocol with no SPECS available. But google is usable with only http. However, if we agree on activating that search tool, we can add a specific FAQ entry, explaining why we activated it, that it is not a dependancy of the software, etc, even giving pointers to this mail, to let people know why it is not an obvious issue. So what do you think, in the end? Note that I am not considering that feature as a must-have. If one of us does not want it to be activated, I will not insist. While I think it could be a good idea, I'm still in doubt about the pro and con I mentioned. [1] <http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/savannah-hackers/2002-09/msg00733.html> [2] <http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/savannah-hackers/2002-09/msg00729.html> - -- Mathieu Roy +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | General Homepage: http://yeupou.coleumes.org/ | | Computing Homepage: http://alberich.coleumes.org/ | | Not a native english speaker: | | http://stock.coleumes.org/doc.php?i=/misc-files/flawed-english | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAUZK2Nl9/9y2hmbkRAqsLAJ9cIONcytcObzA3yBQ6sYuk29qsvQCfY3In ViRhFm9QcAao2trN/iivGB8= =m2Oh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
