Hi,

On Thu, Oct 3, 2019 at 1:38 PM Bradley M. Kuhn <bk...@ebb.org> wrote:

> I am a GNOME Foundation Member *Emeritus*, so please don't take my opinion
> as
> too important.
>
> Olav Vitters wrote, back in August when proposing Discourse:
> > Discourse is free software (including the Javascript) and the
> > dependencies are also free software.
>
> This is correct, "for the moment".  However, Discourse is somewhat of a
> monoculture project, controlled by one company, and has some troubling
> similarities to MongoDB in this regard.  I encourage everyone in the GNOME
> Foundation read Discourse's CLA [0] (which is a Google Doc and likely
> requires non-free Javascript to sign, although not to read), and decide if
> the GNOME Foundation should be comfortable relying on as critical
> infrastructure for a project that has this sort of non-community-oriented
> licensing and governance model.
>
> Of course, Discourse, the software, may well be forked under GPL if
> Discourse, the company, ever uses the CLA to make the canonical version
> into
> proprietary software, but given the monoculture of the project development,
> that might be unrealistic logistically and resource-wise.
>
> Also, given that Discourse is both the name of the software and the name of
> the company, GF will be de-facto promoting the company (and, by
> implication,
> their business model) merely by using the software publicly.


Thanks for the information! I’d like to point out that GNOME is already
using discourse, so while it’s good to take this into account I think it’s
more relevant to the general decision and less relevant to the question of
whether we should move the foundation list.

Cheers,
Meg

>
>
>   * * *
>
> One of my favorite pieces of GNOME history that I was involved with was the
> GNOME copyright assignment policy
> <
> https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/FoundationBoard/Resources/CopyrightAssignment
> >
> , which I am proud to have helped create and draft.  I was so glad that
> GNOME
> took a strong position against proprietary relicensing by for-profit
> companies, as most copylefted project have historically not taken that kind
> of stand.
>
> So, I mainly just want to point out that Discourse *is* such a company.  Of
> course, everyone of us -- even those that use 100% Free Software on our
> machines -- probably use some copylefted software from a company that does
> this kind of thing, so I don't think this issue should necessarily preclude
> GNOME Foundation from choosing to officially rely on such software, but I
> suggest the issue is at least worth discussing before the change is made.
>
> I won't say more on this issue since I'm only a Member Emeritus; it's for
> the
> members to decide this question.
>
> Tobias Mueller  wrote:
> >> I found the discourse mailing list mode to be inferior to a mailing
> list.
>
> I admit I also agree with this, but I assumed (at least on my old behalf)
> that I'm just an old dog who doesn't want to learn new tricks. :)
>
> I admit that especially since becoming Emeritus, it's been easier for me to
> check in with what GF is up to by quickly skimming through emails on this
> list in my usual way, and I lament the change as it's likely to lead me to
> "not check" at all because it won't be worth figuring out Discourse's email
> interface to keep up with a project that I'm not actively working with.
> But,
> again, don't let the opinion of one Emeritus member stop you from needed
> progress. :)
>
>
> This is apropos of nothing, but I wanted to mention that I was on a plane
> last week and I saw someone using GNOME.  Usually, when I'm on the plane
> going to a tech conference, the person using GNOME is going to the same
> conference as me.  Then, I saw they were just using LIbreOffice to work on
> mundane business documents -- clearly stuff not related to the tech
> industry.
> This was so wonderful to see and while I know that competing with Microsoft
> and Apple for the desktop remains difficult and challenging, there are
> users
> out there who aren't tech geeks using GNOME every day and getting real
> introduction to software freedom thanks to the work you all do.  As I said
> in
> my GUADEC keynote years ago, thank you all again for doing this work!
>
>
> [0] CLA is at
>     <
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd7JzGhGR-B9pFrg2byt2tnRjMqJtpnA0Yktl4dwy0-4tGo8g/viewform
> >
>     which is linked from <
> https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md>
> --
> Bradley M. Kuhn - he/him
>
> Pls. support the charity where I work, Software Freedom Conservancy:
> https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/
> _______________________________________________
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> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
>
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