Dear Didier Thanks for help organizing the BSP in Bern.
I have noticed that you have submitted a patch and closed this bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=905674#77 I am sure you are trying to do what is best for free software. But what looks like a good idea in the short run, may be a bad idea in the long run. The long term survival of Debian depends on others building free software that can be packaged, so destroying these people's livelihood is a bad long term strategy. In the reasoning for the patch you state: > Quoting the gpl-faq: [... https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#RequireCitation ...] > Therefore, removing this to make parallel GPL-compliant. I think this is due to a misunderstanding. Maybe you not aware that Richard M. Stallman together with the GNU leaders have cleared the wording and the use of the citation notice, and that he sees it as complying fully with GPLv3? And thus not in conflict with https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#RequireCitation The reasoning why there is no conflict is because citing is a matter of honor - not law. Thus it does not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor, but simply conveys that you will be taking away future funding for development if you do not cite. The mail from RMS is included below. Your patch therefore does not change the GPLv3-compliancy: The code was already compliant. But what your patch *does* do, is to make it harder to earn a living from developing GNU Parallel and will make it much harder for me to justify spending time maintaining GNU Parallel. Please help building more free software instead of attacking the developer's livelihood. Not everyone is so lucky that they are hired in a company where you get paid to develop free software. As Nadia Eghbal puts it in https://www.slideshare.net/NadiaEghbal/consider-the-maintainer: "Is it alright to compromise, or even deliberately ignore, the happiness of maintainers so we that can enjoy free and open source software?" This describes very well what you are doing with the patch, and I refuse to think that was your goal. So if you want to help other developers make a living and thereby get more free software made, I encourage you to revert the patch and instead upgrade to 20180922: Maybe you simply were not aware that the latest stable version (20180922) is *already* GPLv3 compliant. Thanks for your work on free software. It is appreciated. /Ole On Wed, Oct 17, 2018 at 9:07 AM Richard Stallman <r...@gnu.org> wrote: > > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > GNU leaders studied looked at the current version of GNU Parallel. > Based on their report, I've concluded there is no problem in it. : > -- > Dr Richard Stallman > President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org) > Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
