Gunnar Wolf <gw...@debian.org> writes: > Simon Josefsson dijo [Thu, Jul 25, 2024 at 10:12:23AM +0200]: >> > Yes, that is what the media has dubbed "the SCHISM", >> > e.g. https://lwn.net/Articles/953797/ >> > >> > I played around with GnuPG 2.4.4, and it is easy to accidentally create >> > an out-of-spec cert with it: >> >> To be fair, the spec is available, isn't it? It just isn't OpenPGP. > > Right. But there is an ecosystem of tools other than GnuPG that > implement OpenPGP. Forking and going your own way is not a tactic that > follows the ethos of the free software communities; being the dominant > implementation should not give the leverage to force your view upon > others.
On the contrary, I believe forking when you disagree with something is at the very heart of the free software spirit. I do agree with you that it feels uncomfortable when you are subject to decisions you don't like, and is faced with a decision to fork a project or switch to an alternative. Especially when decisions are made in an important project that you cannot easily influence. We have many examples of this pattern -- a close example to OpenPGP vs LibrePGP is that OpenSSH de-facto dictate what other SSH implementations have to support, and that protocol behaviour isn't consistent with any RFCs -- the difference is that most users trust OpenSSH more than the broken RFC system. We've had the GCC vs EGCS split. We've had <flamebait> Debian force systemd on its users, or debian-installer including non-free software. We've had SSLeay vs OpenSSL. We've seen SunJDK vs OpenJDK. Remember Emacs vs XEmacs? We recently had Redis vs Valkey. All these examples have their own unique properties, but one common pattern is that some dominant project make a decision that some set of users dislike, leading to forks of the project or people switch to alternatives. Saying that this pattern is against the ethos of free software when you dislike a decision is not convincing to me. I believe the essence of free software is merely that it gives you the ability to do something constructive about the decision (fork) when it occurs. Leveraging your own dominance to force another view upon others is a common reaction when someone else uses their dominance to force their view. For example, Debian could replace use of GnuPG's gpgv with some other implementation. That is the same kind of dominance decision as GnuPG replacing OpenPGP with LibrePGP, but the difference is that this feels more pleasant when the decision is consistent with your own views. That makes it the right decision for some set of users, but it will alienate and drive away others. There is another way of working and that is to be inclusive towards as many viewpoints as possible, although that approach has its costs and downsides too. /Simon
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