[task #9791] Submission of ForgePlucker

[Mario Castelán Castro]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/task/?9791>

                 Summary: Submission of ForgePlucker
                 Project: Savannah Administration
            Submitted by: esr
            Submitted on: Thu 15 Oct 2009 12:55:55 AM EDT
         Should Start On: Thu 15 Oct 2009 12:00:00 AM EDT
   Should be Finished on: Sun 25 Oct 2009 12:00:00 AM EDT
                Category: Project Approval
                Priority: 5 - Normal
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
        Percent Complete: 0%
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                  Effort: 0.00

    _______________________________________________________

Details:

A new project has been registered at Savannah
This project account will remain inactive until a site admin approves or
discards the registration.


= Registration Administration =

While this item will be useful to track the registration process, *approving
or discarding the registration must be done using the specific Group
Administration
<https://savannah.gnu.org/siteadmin/groupedit.php?group_id=10368> page*,
accessible only to site administrators, effectively *logged as site
administrators* (superuser):

* Group Administration
<https://savannah.gnu.org/siteadmin/groupedit.php?group_id=10368>


= Registration Details =

* Name: *ForgePlucker*
* System Name:  *forgeplucker*
* Type: non-GNU software & documentation
* License: Modified BSD License (No other licenses are involved. )

----

==== Description: ====
ForgePlucker intends to produce simple tools to break projects out of the
data jails that too many open-source hosting sites have become.  The proof of
concept can recover the state of bug-trackers on Berlios or Savannah, and we
expect to support that capability on Gna! and SourceForge very soon.  Over
time, we will support more and more complete extraction of more sorts of
project state, including repositories, mailing lists, developer permissions,
task lists, and static webspace. Eventually we look forward to developing a
standardized forge-to-forge project interchange format and building importers
for it.


==== Other Software Required: ====
Code is pure Python with no dependencies other than the Python standard
library.


==== Tarball URL: ====
http://savannah.gnu.org/submissions_uploads/foregeplucker.tar.gz






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[Mario Castelán Castro]

Follow-up Comment #1, task #9791 (project administration):

Hi, I am evaluating your project.

1) Note that Savannah supports projects of the Free Software movement, not
projects of the Open Source movement.

We are careful about ethical issues and insist on producing software that is
not dependent on proprietary software.

While Open Source, as defined by its founders, means something pretty close
to Free Software, it's frequently misunderstood.  For more information, please
see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html.

Would you be willing to speak about free software on Savannah and not open
source?

2) In order to release your project properly and unambiguously under the
Modified BSD License, please place copyright notices and
permission-to-copy statements at the beginning of every copyrightable file,
usually any file more than 10 lines long.

For more information, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html .

If some of your files cannot carry such notices (e.g. binary files), then you
can add a README file in the same directory containing the copyright and
license notices. Check
http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Notices.html for further
information.

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[Eric S. Raymond-2]

Nicodemo Alvaro <INVALID.NOREPLY@...>:
> While Open Source, as defined by its founders, means something pretty close
> to Free Software, it's frequently misunderstood.

Er. I *am* one of the founders.  You didn't have to tell mee that. :-)

> Would you be willing to speak about free software on Savannah and not open
> source?

What is your standard for this?  I don't believe I use either term in the
project materials.  Let me check...I just grepped, and I don't.  What would
I need to do to satisfy this requirement?
 
> 2) In order to release your project properly and unambiguously under the
> Modified BSD License, please place copyright notices and
> permission-to-copy statements at the beginning of every copyrightable file,
> usually any file more than 10 lines long.

You would be correct if I were applying GPL; the legal theory under
which it was constructed (propagation via a copyright hook) makes
attaching an instance to every item of copyrighted material prudent.
This is not the case with BSD or other licenses which depend on a
different way of satisfying the meeting-of-minds test, and for them that
practice is overkill.

To protect my code, I deem it sufficient to have a COPYING file which
is included by reference.  I know what the GPL FAQ says, but you should
not inappropriately generalize that advice to other licenses.
--
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

[Karl Berry]

    You would be correct if I were applying GPL; the legal theory under
    which it was constructed (propagation via a copyright hook) makes
    attaching an instance to every item of copyrighted material prudent.
    This is not the case with BSD or other licenses which depend on a
    different way of satisfying the meeting-of-minds test, and for them that
    practice is overkill.

Perhaps a ruling from rms as to savannah policy is needed.

[Mario Castelán Castro]

Follow-up Comment #2, task #9791 (project administration):

I apologize for not personalizing that pre-written note. It was an
oversight.

"ForgePlucker intends to produce simple tools to break projects out of the
data jails that too many open-source hosting sites have become."

The first sentence of your description made me think of the Open Source
movement. I do not think this is good for Savannah to refer to other sites and
Savannah itself as open-source hosting sites.

The Savannah policy on speaking of free software is in the requirements.

https://savannah.gnu.org/register/requirements.php

> To protect my code, I deem it sufficient to have a COPYING file which is
> included by reference.  I know what the GPL FAQ says, but you should
> not inappropriately generalize that advice to other licenses.

In your script 'bugplucker.py' you have:

"This code is Copright (c) 2009 by Eric S. Raymond.  New BSD luicense
applies"

^Spelling errors. license. copyright

Karl has told me that in order to give permissions each source file needs to
have a copying permissions notice.

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/savannah-hackers-public/2009-10/msg00039.html

"New BSD" is vague and could refer to the many other Modified BSD licenses
when it comes out. From what I've seen in the license list, there are too many
to know which one is referred to. Sylvain claimed that the license you used is
unique.

Here are some of the many variations of the BSD license.
http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html
http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/COPYRIGHT2.html#5
http://labs.metacarta.com/license-explanation.html#license

Our guidelines in the wiki state in the Other Licenses section:

"If the license is small (such as the mBSD/MIT/Expat license), instead of a
license notice, include it entirely at the top of all your files."

It was asked of you in the registration checklist when you applied if you had
placed license notices in all your files.

I hope that explains everything.

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[Eric S. Raymond-2]

Nicodemo Alvaro <INVALID.NOREPLY@...>:
> "ForgePlucker intends to produce simple tools to break projects out of the
> data jails that too many open-source hosting sites have become."

I didn't grep for the version with the hyphen. :-)
 
> The first sentence of your description made me think of the Open Source
> movement. I do not think this is good for Savannah to refer to other sites and
> Savannah itself as open-source hosting sites.

Most of the other sites in question prefer the term "open source"
however, because they use the OSD as a policy filter annd want the
reference to it (this is, in particular, the case at SourceForge).  It
is generally interpreted to include "free software".  Can I meert your
requirements in some way that does not misrepresent them?
 
> ^Spelling errors. license. copyright

I fixed that a few days ago.  Now reads:

This code is Copyright (c) 2009 by Eric S. Raymond.  New BSD license applies.
For the terms of this license, see the file COPYING included with this
distribution.
 
> Karl has told me that in order to give permissions each source file needs to
> have a copying permissions notice.

Does the above suffice as a license notice?  The COPYING file removes
all ambiguity.

> "New BSD" is vague and could refer to the many other Modified BSD licenses
> when it comes out. From what I've seen in the license list, there are too many
> to know which one is referred to. Sylvain claimed that the license you used is
> unique.

Thank you for pointing this out.  I copied it from an older vrersion
in which the bullet points were not formatted as bullet points but
in-linbe paragraphs; substantively they are the same.

I have replaced it with the text from the BSD license template at
opensource.org. This version is generally considered canonical.

> Our guidelines in the wiki state in the Other Licenses section:
>
> "If the license is small (such as the mBSD/MIT/Expat license), instead of a
> license notice, include it entirely at the top of all your files."
>
> It was asked of you in the registration checklist when you applied if you had
> placed license notices in all your files.

That was my intention.  Does the aboove satisfy your requirements?
--
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

[Mario Castelán Castro]

Follow-up Comment #3, task #9791 (project administration):

You could define it differently your project differently. Why leave it to the
suggestion that proprietary applications could not become free software with
this application?

The term seems more ambiguous, since SourceForge and Berlios are neither
under any free software license nor available for the public. Looking at what
Savannah seems to call itself on the front page would suffice for everything,
I think. A software forge.

So why not revise to this:

"ForgePlucker intends to produce simple tools to break projects out of the
data jails that too many software forge sites have become."

This site cares about the 4 freedoms as a whole; so if you are to set
software apart from the non-free you must write what best describes that. So
you could switch "software forge" with "free software hosting" to be
acceptable.

For the notice, Savannah wishes to play safe than sorry. Copyright is a
complicated issue. If you wish to use that as your licensing notice, I was
told we can ask licensing@... . That will obviously take some more time
though.

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[Eric S. Raymond-2]

Nicodemo Alvaro <INVALID.NOREPLY@...>:
> So why not revise to this:
>
> "ForgePlucker intends to produce simple tools to break projects out of the
> data jails that too many software forge sites have become."

I'm willing to do that, I guess.
 
> For the notice, Savannah wishes to play safe than sorry. Copyright is a
> complicated issue.

I know.  For a non-lawyer I'm pretty expert on it.  I've had to be.

>                If you wish to use that as your licensing notice, I was
> told we can ask licensing@... . That will obviously take some more time
> though.

There's no actual hurry, and I think it would be a good idea to establish
a precedent for inclusion of non-GPL licenses by reference.  S, yes,
go ahead and ask.  If you don;t have a copy of my explanation to
forward them, I can send you another. Copy me on the query?
--
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

[Mario Castelán Castro]

Follow-up Comment #4, task #9791 (project administration):

It just recently clicked in my head that the big reason why we require a
clear and precise license notice is that many projects have a file called
COPYING and so this will create a mess when there is a project that includes
your code or vice versa. Does that to you justify the need for the full
modified BSD license notice? If not I still have not received your indication
of why. Have you already submitted it to licensing@...?

For the record, I privately sent you the below message.

> Yes, please send me your explanation. I will send the message to
> licensing and cc you and savannah-hackers. How does that sound?
>
> There are a few things I was thinking about that to them make it
> essential to have the full license. If you see the GNU GPL license
> notice you will see that there are three things defined. There is no
> warranty, where you can get the license if it was not given to you, and
> which license the program is under. Free software allows you to copy
> any part of the code. Since the code and license are separate it's easy
> to forget to copy the license.

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[Eric S. Raymond-2]

Nicodemo Alvaro <INVALID.NOREPLY@...>:
>
> Follow-up Comment #4, task #9791 (project administration):
>
> It just recently clicked in my head that the big reason why we require a
> clear and precise license notice is that many projects have a file called
> COPYING and so this will create a mess when there is a project that includes
> your code or vice versa. Does that to you justify the need for the full
> modified BSD license notice? If not I still have not received your indication
> of why. Have you already submitted it to licensing@...?

No.
 

> For the record, I privately sent you the below message.
>
> > Yes, please send me your explanation. I will send the message to
> > licensing and cc you and savannah-hackers. How does that sound?
> >
> > There are a few things I was thinking about that to them make it
> > essential to have the full license. If you see the GNU GPL license
> > notice you will see that there are three things defined. There is no
> > warranty, where you can get the license if it was not given to you, and
> > which license the program is under. Free software allows you to copy
> > any part of the code. Since the code and license are separate it's easy
> > to forget to copy the license.

I didn't receive the previous.  

I think I understand now.  You want a full license in each header
because you think inclusion by reference to a COPYING file might lead
to the link to the full COPYING file being lost when someone else
picks up the code.

For myself, I think this is not a case worth worrying about.  Unlike
someone attaching GPL, I don't have any derivative-works conditions I
want to impose on downstream parities.  So as long as they don't
remove my copyright, whether they read the COPYING file actually
matters very little to me; anyone who reads "new BSD license" will
know what I want without having to read that file.

But there's an easy solution to this "problem".  I can say "BSD license",
include an URL to the canonical BSD license at OSI and remove COPYING
entirely.  For your purposes, this might be better.
--
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

[Mario Castelán Castro]

Follow-up Comment #5, task #9791 (project administration):

> So as long as they don't remove my copyright, whether they read
> the COPYING file actually matters very little to me; anyone who
> reads "new BSD license" will know what I want without having to
> read that file.

Actually what you want seems unclear to me :(. If you are only interested in
the copyright notices being preserved. I can recommend the GNU All-Permissive
license. There is also the WTFPL, but I don't know exactly how to use that.

http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/License-Notices-for-Other-Files.html

> But there's an easy solution to this "problem".  I can say "BSD
> license", include an URL to the canonical BSD license at OSI
> and remove COPYING entirely.  For your purposes, this might be
> better.

Remember that the orignal BSD License is incompatible with the GNU GPL. I
can't accept that then.

What I want is compliance to ensure that the software is free software.

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[Mario Castelán Castro]

Update of task #9791 (project administration):

                  Status:                    None => Cancelled              
             Assigned to:                    None => nicalvaro              
             Open/Closed:                    Open => Closed                

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Follow-up Comment #6:

I see you have your project hosted on GNA! I will close this application out
then.

http://gna.org/projects/forgeplucker/

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