Re: [RFC] Linux Kernel Subversion Howto

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com>]

On Feb 11, 2005, lm@bitmover.com (Larry McVoy) wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 01:30:22PM -0200, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> > Can you offer any plausible explanation other than a good faith desire
>> > to help the open source community, albeit in a non-traditional way?

>> I don't see what you've done as helping the open source community.  

Sorry.  I should have said the Free Software community.  The Open
Source community doesn't generally care about the moral issues related
with freedom and avoiding the use of proprietary software.

Still, this sentence, taken out of the context where it was, sounded
much stronger than I meant.  I don't know whether you quoted it out of
context on purpose, to make it (and myself) an easier target for
criticism, or just because you didn't feel like quoting the
explanation for it below, in which I used the correct term to refer to
the Free Software community.

> So in your mind, aiding the open source community is done only through
> creating more open source.  Directly.

No, there are several other ways to help both the Free Software and
the Open Source community.  But getting them to use proprietary
software isn't a way to help promote Free Software.  It does undermine
the message of software freedom.

> The fact that open source projects which use BK are more productive
> than if they were not using BK is irrelevant and of no value,
> correct?

IMNSHO, the most justifiable use of proprietary software is in
developing a free alternative, like in the beginning of the GNU
project, when no completely-free operating system existed.

Using proprietary software just because you can, without making
efforts to switch to Free Software as soon as possible, is a sure way
to help the proprietary software side win the battle against free
software.

Entrapping yourself into a piece of proprietary software that will not
only forbid you from working on free alternatives, but also prevent
you from sharing the information you stored in it yourself is, IMHO, a
mistake.

> The fact that they are creating more open source more quickly
> because of their use of BK is irrelevant and of no value, correct?

It surely does have some value.  I don't think such value outweights
the lock-in.

> In that case, get the free BK users to agree with you and we'll pull the
> plug on free BK.

Heh.  Yeah, right.  Don't count on everybody being as religious as I
am on these matters.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva             http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}