Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: QA issue: No stable skype in Tree
On 6/19/07, Steve Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chris Gianelloni wrote: On Mon, 2007-06-18 at 06:01 +0100, Steve Long wrote: Stephen Bennett wrote: Not everyone sees that as a reason not to use a potentially useful piece of software. We're not debian. Could you clarify whether this is indeed a Gentoo QA issue, or in fact a licensing issue? If the latter case, this discussion should prob'y go to the new -project ml if and when, or indeed the user forums. The problem with skype is really a problem with our policy. The policy is really designed for open source software which we can actually fix when we find a problem. Yeah and that's kinda the whole argument against closed-source. I fail to see how that's the problem of a Free software distro? Further, if it's a policy issue, why are you guys continuing the thread? Oh I see, when it's stuff *you* care about, it's development. Cool. I'll try not respond directly to the trollish like statement, and will try to keep my response as non-troll-like as possible ( i might fail..but if so, its because of my earlier defilement I underwent when I voluntarily installed IE in linux/wine :( ) I think its fine to discuss such issues as long we are calm and rational about it. Half the discussion is to as whether or not this is a policy problem, and not purely a technical one, as afaik, theres no ML dedicated to discussing which ML something should be on :) Lets try the similarities between say, SunJava and Skype, both having alternatives ( ie: blackdown ), ( im talking about the JVM here, which to the best of my knowledge is not yet OSS ). Both are restricted by upstream in licensing that wont permit us to host the files ourself. To the best of my knowledge, neither Java or Skype have any source available that we can fix ourselves. The discussion question is, if java for some reason of insanity, were to release a new version, which gentoo deemed 'unstable', and then a week later prohibit all downloads of prior versions, what would we do?. The fact is, that regardless of 'policy', people want Java, and many servers using Java may be utilizing software which they had to pay for, in their JVM. ( And you guys have all seen how cross-version friendly java stuff can be right? 1.4-1.5 gave me good times... ) And it would be senseless for us to say 'hmm... java's not OSS free, lets take it out of gentoo altogether, considering that until now, it had been quite satisfactory in portage. I'm probably as much an OpenSource / FreeSoftware advocate as the rest of this ML ( I had a friend order me a Chë Stallman T' from literally the other side of the world ), and windows Microsoft drive me nuts, but as painful as it is for me to say this, I believe if there was a non-opensource static Linux-native build of internet explorer, and Microsofts licensing permitted it, that there would be one day an ebuild in portage for it ( it would probably be permanently hard masked tho, under 'this is suspicious enemy software' which would require you to set SELL_MY_SOUL=YES in make.conf ), because fact of the matter is, people without windows still need that evil little tyke to test websites so that the lesser informed greater percentage of the population ( ~80% ) who still use it to surf won't run screaming from your site and never return. gentoo-project-esque-content IMO, Gentoo is in the middle of the grey lands between only use opensource , and you corporate weenie. While Gentoo does actively encourage opensource software, it still permits you to be the one who wears the pants, the one to make the decision, making Gentoo your own project, not some elitist dev's extremist ideals, and this opens up the user base, and helps produce a migration path by giving the user something they're familiar with, like, and use, while we create something better and progressively coax them into using it, and thus further spreading the good opensource futher than it otherwise would. /g-p-e-c *whimpers* i think that is all... nobody torch me please :) With the closed-source stuff, our policy should be a bit more lax since we're at the mercy of the upstream. Er what? Some of us don't wish to be at the mercy of anyone, especially not some corporation nicking VOIP. That's why we use GNU software. Also, remember that our policy says that 30 days is *suggested* before stabilization. The maintainer has the authority to ask for stabilization sooner, even the same day the package is put into the tree, if there is sufficient reason for doing so. Whatever; the point is y'all were much more vicious about someone offering all the code under the GPL.. Honestly, this whole email makes me wonder why you work in FOSS. tuomov only wanted to be sure updates were issued promptly. What exactly is the technical difference? As for potentially useful, so was Internet Explorer, last time I looked at what you could do with its Object Model. I still ain't voting to bring it to Gentoo.. ;)
[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: QA issue: No stable skype in Tree
Steev Klimaszewski wrote: It is neither a QA nor license issue, its an issue of the download being unavailable. Please read the full thread. And to reply to myself - its a licensing issue since we cannot mirror the distfile. Er thanks for that ;) However, I hardly find that facist - my own opinion, others vary of course - the main issue is simply that the download won't be available - if you even throw out the licensing issue of not mirroring, have you tried to install 2006.0 lately? (Yes, I know 2007.0 is out) - you can't even do a 2006.0 install if you use the portage and stage3 tarballs from the cd because those distfiles are no longer available. Sorry while your opinion on the license seems relevant, the rest seems not so to me. If you want to get into the whole discussion about keeping old ebuilds, the forums have been after that for ages. The standard reply is download them from cvs, which isn't hard if you need 'em for enterprise (the installed ones are kept in vdb in any case.) I don't see why Gentoo should be supporting old *install media* as opposed to the tree of software which people should have updated to. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: QA issue: No stable skype in Tree
Chris Gianelloni wrote: On Mon, 2007-06-18 at 06:01 +0100, Steve Long wrote: Stephen Bennett wrote: Not everyone sees that as a reason not to use a potentially useful piece of software. We're not debian. Could you clarify whether this is indeed a Gentoo QA issue, or in fact a licensing issue? If the latter case, this discussion should prob'y go to the new -project ml if and when, or indeed the user forums. The problem with skype is really a problem with our policy. The policy is really designed for open source software which we can actually fix when we find a problem. Yeah and that's kinda the whole argument against closed-source. I fail to see how that's the problem of a Free software distro? Further, if it's a policy issue, why are you guys continuing the thread? Oh I see, when it's stuff *you* care about, it's development. Cool. With the closed-source stuff, our policy should be a bit more lax since we're at the mercy of the upstream. Er what? Some of us don't wish to be at the mercy of anyone, especially not some corporation nicking VOIP. That's why we use GNU software. Also, remember that our policy says that 30 days is *suggested* before stabilization. The maintainer has the authority to ask for stabilization sooner, even the same day the package is put into the tree, if there is sufficient reason for doing so. Whatever; the point is y'all were much more vicious about someone offering all the code under the GPL.. Honestly, this whole email makes me wonder why you work in FOSS. tuomov only wanted to be sure updates were issued promptly. What exactly is the technical difference? As for potentially useful, so was Internet Explorer, last time I looked at what you could do with its Object Model. I still ain't voting to bring it to Gentoo.. ;) Please refrain from these kinds of arguments that have no technical bearing. Internet Explorer doesn't even *run* on Gentoo. If it did, it would likely be in the tree since quite a few people would likely use it, even if just for testing. I know that if I were able to test things on IE from Linux without having to fire up VMware that I would be quite happy. Er let's not get into it. Use WINE or a dual-boot, or VMware, or xen or whatever you want. (It was a joke, hence the wink. Call the proctors.. whoops!) /me wanders off mumbling about hypocrisy, and thinking about !anarchy in #bash.. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: QA issue: No stable skype in Tree
On Mon, 2007-06-18 at 23:49 +0100, Steve Long wrote: Could you clarify whether this is indeed a Gentoo QA issue, or in fact a licensing issue? If the latter case, this discussion should prob'y go to the new -project ml if and when, or indeed the user forums. The problem with skype is really a problem with our policy. The policy is really designed for open source software which we can actually fix when we find a problem. Yeah and that's kinda the whole argument against closed-source. I fail to see how that's the problem of a Free software distro? Further, if it's a policy issue, why are you guys continuing the thread? Oh I see, when it's stuff *you* care about, it's development. Cool. Alright. I've had about enough of your constant and pointless bashing of everything that we do. Seriously. Grow up. Take a step back and come back after you've decided to actually be *useful* or don't come back, at all. I could really care less which you choose at this point because your constant pot shots at us make the rest of your comments completely worthless and tainted. As for policy, nobody said that policy discussions aren't sometimes technical. There also is *not* another list for this currently, so there's nowhere else to go with it, especially considering that current policy does state for Gentoo developers to ask these sort of questions on this list. As for whether or not to continue this discussion or not, this _is_ *our* list. We can do with it as we please. If the Gentoo developers as a whole decided to dedicate this list to pink ponies, we can. As I see it, this is still a discussion on how to work around the policies in place with a *TECHNICAL SOLUTION* for this package, which falls in line perfectly with this list. Er what? Some of us don't wish to be at the mercy of anyone, especially not some corporation nicking VOIP. That's why we use GNU software. No, it is why *you* use *free* software. Nobody is forcing you to install it, either, so your point is moot. It is being offered for the people that *do* want it. Also, I dare you to look at how much software on your system is *not* GNU. Oh crap! Portage isn't GNU! It must be evil!!!11one1!! Seriously. Please take a few moments to think about what you're writing before doing so. Maybe if you had said something about FSF-approved or OSI-approved, but GNU? We aren't Debian. Less than 1/25th of the software on my system is GNU. Less than 1/25th. How those megalomaniacs can possibly even imply that we owe them recognition on every Linux system is beyond me. I'm just waiting for the annual You should change your name to Gentoo GNU/Linux email. ;] -- Chris Gianelloni Release Engineering Strategic Lead Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee Gentoo Foundation signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: QA issue: No stable skype in Tree
On Mon, 2007-06-18 at 23:49 +0100, Steve Long wrote: Oh I see, when it's stuff *you* care about, it's development. Cool. That's sort of the point, isn't it? Developers are here mostly to scratch their own respective itches -- so, by necessity, we talk about stuff we care about. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: QA issue: No stable skype in Tree
Chris Gianelloni wrote: If the Gentoo developers as a whole decided to dedicate this list to pink ponies, we can. Are pretty purple ponies acceptable as well? -- Andrew Gaffney http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/ Gentoo Linux Developer Catalyst/Installer + x86 release coordinator -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: QA issue: No stable skype in Tree
On Tuesday 19 Jun 2007 4:19:49 am Steve Long wrote: Er what? Some of us don't wish to be at the mercy of anyone, especially not some corporation nicking VOIP. That's why we use GNU software. I don't understand this attitude. Do you really have to bash everything that you do not use? Do you have any experience of using VOIP software in Linux and how frustrating the situation is? Do you realise that nothing except Skype works in even half decent manner? Here is a latest blog entry by one of the Amarok developers and his quest with VOIP applications http://apachelog.blogspot.com/2007/06/voip-screw-it.html Now go and flame him for not using GNU software. -- Regards, Abhay signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
