On 1 April 2013 18:45, hellekin <[email protected]> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA512 > > On 04/01/2013 12:02 PM, Geert Lovink wrote: > > > >> Erkan Yilmaz: What are the plans of the GNU social team to > >> continue StatusNet ? > > > *** I've been asking the same thing or similar to mattl for a while. > Since he considers I wanted to takeover the name of this project, he > ignored me consistently. Last thing he said was that GNU Social is not > dead and they're going through a procedure to incorporate "two huge > code donations". Although he never replied, I suspect that one of them > is the code of StatusNet itself. Gathering copyright ownership on that > one is titan work. > > The copyright issue with StatusNet is that there's no single owner: it > prevented Evan Prodromou, the man behind StatusNet and Pump.io, from > being able to propose commercial dual-licensing of the software after > the fact, as it would require cooperation of all copyright owners. > It's not a problem with AGPLv3+ itself, the license of StatusNet, but > of the copyright ownership strategy: the copyright ownership strategy > of GNU Social is to ask all contributors to waive copyright ownership > to the FSF, so that the foundation can defend the software in a court > of law. > > When a project has many developers sharing the copyright, vs. a single > entity, changing the license ranges from very difficult to impossible. > For example, DokuWiki is released under the GNU General Public License > version 2 exclusively. At the time of its creation in 2004, it seemed > like the normal thing to do, as GPLv3 did not exist yet. Over the > course of 3 years, until the release of GPLv3, the number of > developers--and copyright owners, had rocketed to more than a hundred > contributors. Getting them, including the missing ones, to agree on > adding the little + to GPLv2 in order to authorize the GPLv3, and > later versions, in addition to the current license, was already a lost > cause. [0] >
Is the code being GPL a show stopper? Having looked at the status.net codebase a few times, it's qutie hefty too, aside from the legal point. > > However I'm not convinced of the strategic interest of such a move--if > it's what I suspect. The successor of StatusNet, pump.io, comes with a > number of advantages--when it's ready: the most important is probably > the performance gain. Evan commented recently [1] that the cost > savings of hosting pump.io vs. StatusNet's costs are more than > ten-fold, which means that pump.io could easily run on a Freedom Box, > a Raspberry Pi, or the equivalent free hardware (aka 100% OHL [2] > compliant box) when it's available, for any household to run > cheaply--server-resource-wise, and be more scalable for smaller > organizations that want to run their own instances. > > Other concerns include the viability of the code base in the future: > StatusNet is already mature code, and probably hit the wall of > diminishing returns already, while pump.io is nascent and built on > NodeJS. NodeJS is a much younger platform than PHP, and benefits from > faster development cycles, and an innovative community who learned on > the errors of the past. The current competitive advantages of PHP, its > pervasiveness among ISPs, and its very large developer base, are going > to be challenged very soon, as ISPs adopt newer languages such as > Python/Django, Ruby/Rails, NodeJS, etc. more widely [3]. Note that a > sound copyright ownership policy on StatusNet might revive the > innovation of the software, although it will still remain > (theoretically) slower to develop that NodeJS, Ruby, LISP, etc. > The problem with status net was neither PHP nor performance. It was that it didnt scale. > > Now, I hope that the GNU Social team will be more responsive as they > approach release date. Mattl has been busy with the very successful > LibreFM, and the daunting secret task of copyright assignments over > the upcoming secret weapons of GNU Social. > > Let's hope for the best. > > == > hk > > [0] Dokuwiki's License FAQ does not mention any specific version of > the GPL, while the repository explicitly mentions GPLv2, and the Ohloh > entry mistakenly mentions GPLv2+ (edit: corrected) > https://www.dokuwiki.org/faq:license > https://github.com/splitbrain/dokuwiki/blob/master/COPYING > http://www.ohloh.net/p/dokuwiki/licenses > > Dokuwiki's wiki contents though, went through a license change 2 years > ago: > https://www.dokuwiki.org/licensing_change > https://www.dokuwiki.org/devel:ideas:relicensing > > [1] http://identi.ca/conversation/99265765#notice-100338214 > > [2] http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cernohl > > [3] http://networkeffectalliance.org > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ > > iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJRWbm7AAoJEDhjYTkcokoTD6UQAIWvG+YFEJMVSBOd8momlmMn > K+z50oAufOFMonC2rHy4R3Sp1mNj3SMHgRZUFIH2Au/rwXnDAYfWoL3ItoiH5Pk7 > lnF1OLFcu6eMO+aDD+L0oej7zYzIXXQFNPtLnc1NodTmqYfofSfuy1E1sl4KY8gg > 3jHYB1AzgG7/TUpqduVu1zmGwnCyVvqIiaVSrk82yOG9ZQVWQkcaFcau7QQNP6v1 > Ot4016K1vcWTZTxL86oxB9LvZmSyb0YxSt3Mm6QtQ5omdsKMv88ytVqydBjZiK7T > r/AvWBJSY7sCR6KHqJelr1KUgsWnBGADuvP34ak4P4mAoJhGVNo8TbVTw/eJKk0y > pmiyBH3H/VbB/80/xuhsA9iBe0PjTYppn7KpgQ+PUyWUd900dg9scMgBRWD1f08b > tw4iWcxqiIeFlYIAS3vUeRyUlZ3yqv45h9GcvvGBRsGjXijkmIiZPcrUKwOQ4t60 > cNzVUZrnI2XvXi/VchhZA92mg/+LSx2Tk6OJ8hxbDXZboQtC0dyoweEWcGx9KZT7 > MX5LUUrOlHhg/LKhAZD8yCwhKcwJr+/ApC5ROeW6NQUQd5xir96Gbv6B418OXKui > kKDwP/OWfICkPMrWcGUpMGMNkCNvgwf4kMp/HhwQTcztwGxFYJXqnN5rD6ivHo1G > bglqVgUXY128MtDwph24 > =jE8m > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > >
