Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Re: [Savannah-register-public] project approval

[Alex Fernandez]

Hi again,

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 9:43 AM, LynX <address@hidden> wrote:
> Thank you all for your responses. Why I turned to savannah its because:
> http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/ElispArea#toc5

Yes, it's a good place to host software.

> But after Mario Castelan Castro I am not sure where I can host these
> extensions :) Will put them to my homepage :)

Savannah is run by the FSF; Mario and myself are just voluntary
admins, and it's the FSF (i.e. Karl Berry) who can make exceptions to
FSF rules.

As Mario did above, we should always consider what our principles and
goals are, and consider that the rules just implement the policies
most likely to achieve those goals. However, I don't draw the same
conclusions from those principles. Rules can and should have
exceptions. It does not mean that the rules are flawed: it just means
that the are not as complete as we would like. Rules are incapable, by
their very nature of being generalizations, to encompass the whole
world; therefore they will always have corner cases where cases have
to be considered individually, by their own merits. If possible these
new cases should supplement and augment the rules themselves; this
feedback loop is essential for improvement, but it will always accept
new improvements.

If we want to have more free software, we should strive for free
software to be written. The goal of having a fully free system will be
fulfilled when everything we can do on proprietary systems can also be
done on a free system too, as Mario points out. But this means that
free software should be as good as (or probably better than)
proprietary software, also on proprietary platforms. The GNU project
explicitly allows free software to run on proprietary platforms (the
famous "system library exception") for a reason: to allow people using
those platforms to try out free software. If free software on those
platforms is deliberately handicapped, it will probably not make
people move over to free platforms; instead they will think that free
software is worse than the proprietary alternatives. Also, even the
best free software advocates do have to use proprietary platforms from
time to time, and being able to use free software there as comfortably
as possible will always be a good thing.

Improving Emacs on Windows may look like improving Windows, when seen
by a critical eye; but in the end it is more about improving Emacs
itself. I would think that writing an extension to free software (even
if it only runs on proprietary platforms) should always be allowed on
Savannah, and perhaps it should be stated clearly in the hosting
requirements.

I await for Karl to make an authoritative final decision.

Alex.