[ydl-gen] Re: pine: was: Re: JOB POSTING: Application Evangelist

[Danny Hembree]

On Sat, 2005-08-27 at 09:32, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> >   The track record is irrelevant. Their license prevents people from doing
> > the right thing and this is why many distros (including Red Hat) have
> > dropped Pine.
> > 
> >   If I'm a distro maintainer, I don't want to *have* to wait for a third
> > party developer if I found a security fix now. Why should I wait? Also, if
> > the fix that I have is a feature enhancement that the UofW folks don't
> > want or agree with, then I'm not allowed to ship the binaries.
> > 
> > Does this ring a bell:
> 
> At the risk of inflaming the religious sensitivities of the devout
> open source-only bigots (I don't pull punches on this topic, do I ;-):
> 
> I suspect that the UW team's track record is significantly better than
> that of the typical equal quality GNU project. Plus, the anecdotal
> comments on this list suggest that reality is very different from the
> Microsoft-schooled FUD GNU open source advocates (I am NOT targeting
> this at you Chris, merely at all the FUDers that I've seen post on the
> "merits" of GNU vs other OSS)!
> 
> Pine is hands down the most user friendly CLUI mailer available to
> people. I first was introduced to it in 1993 and STILL today I see it
> in use (and I use it on my server). It's a functional piece of
> software that has yet to have been replicated under the GNU licence.
> 
> Anyway, that's my match and ten litres of jet fuel on this topic.

The point of the GNU license is to prevent an individual or group from
privatizing the project. That means cutting out all the folks who worked
on it and exploiting the user/developer base that has been built. The
University of Washington doesn't need or want GNU style developers, they
have graduate slave labor. Other institutions have similar projects that
are funded by taxpayers and/or captive rate payers. These institutions
can sell off or give away the project and you'll either have to quit
using it or pay someone license fees. The list of projects that this has
happened to would be a good research topic. Netscape, perhaps Mozilla
and Debian springs to mind, Fetch, CuSeeMe, ...

The GNU license protects users and developers from this by insisting
that the source code and all works derived from it remain open and
available. I've found that those who rant against this are either new to
the industry and don't know the history, or are looking to privatize a
project and find the GNU license to "restrictive".

As to the merits of one system over the other, well, thats the big
debate of our time isn't it. I take a very practical point of view and
avoid metaphysical arguments, what works. The ubiquitous presence of GNU
software in every major project speaks for itself. Where would we be
without gcc and emacs ? Do you remember the proprietary compiler wars?
Compile many time and run nowhere used to be standard operating
procedure.

I'm not arguing against the UW and the way they are handling pine, just
pointing out the pitfalls and trying to explain the reluctance others
have about using it. It's almost an economic certainty that those who
don't have the protection of GPL will eventually get bit.