I'm on the GNU maintainers team; I want to clarify a couple things about this:
First, Nano has _not_ left the GNU project; GNU Nano still does and will continue to exist. The current maintainer of GNU Nano---Chris Allegretta---was hoping to add Benno Schulenberg as a co-maintainer, citing numerous contributions by him. Unfortunately, Benno refused to accept GNU's maintainership agreement, and so was not appointed. Benno also did not want to assign copyright to the FSF for his contributions.
Instead, it seems, Benno decided to fork the project. But he did so with hostility: he updated the official GNU Nano website, rather than creating a website for the fork.
It's early, so there's still discussion going on, but again, to be clear: GNU Nano has absolutely not left GNU.
But if a or the driving force of a project takes things elsewhere, the users will eventually follow. If the disagreement was over GNU's insistence to require assigning copyright to the FSF, then I can fully understand the reluctance. It's the same reason many contributors cannot officially submit patches to side projects of Google employees, Ubuntu projects, etc.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but it sounds like GNU project requires that either all code is assigned to FSF, or none and then the project need to enforce copyright themselves. In this case, the current maintainer want to assign copyright, the new co-mainter don't, and thus the project got an internal conflict between the maintainer and co-maintainer. The hostility is thus primarily between the two maintainers, rather than between GNU and Benno.
The copyright assignment requirements in GNU projects point to the GPL not being good enough, thereby undermining it.
They are obviously rooted in the fear that in fact the FSF cannot use code that is merely GPL-ed, if someone else owns the copyright.
"Use the GPL for your code to grant everyone rights and freedoms. Just not when giving to us; we would prefer your right, not your left, thank you very much."
There is a legitimate concern that someone apparently placing code under the GPL might not have the right to do so. But for that, an affidavit should be good enough, not an affidavit plus assignment of copyright to the FSF.
The paranoid copyright assignment obviously guards against the possibility that a rightfully proclaimed GPL can be retroactively revoked. Someone in the project changes their mind and says that these pieces which are wrote are no longer GPLed; not going forward, nor in any past revisions. (That author him or herself, not some previous employer or other third party, from whom permission had not been properly obtained to have that work under the GPL.)
If the FSF believes this to be a real threat, any group of users anywhere relying on the GPL should take the same view.
The most prominent claim in your comment is that Benno forked the project "with hostility" by updating the official GNU Nano website. Can you explain why you consider nano-editor.org to officially "belong" to GNU? Chris Allegretta, whom you call the current maintainer, has gone on record saying he's the one who changed the website, and that Benno did not take over the website in a hostile way: http://www.asty.org/2016/06/23/whats-up-with-nano/
Why doesn't Chris just go update the website to clarify this? Surely Benno isn't the only one with access to change the site. Even if so, the domain is registered to Chris.
> Benno also did not want to assign copyright to the FSF for his contributions.
In Germany, you cannot legally sign away copyright (i.e. signing away your copyright is either an empty action or may even void other agreements contained in a larger contract).
Do I understand it right that Benno is doing a lot of work, but he does not want to continue the project in a manner which is consistent with the vision Chris as the principal maintainer of the project holds?
> > As you know, I will not assign my copyright to the FSF,
> > nor to anyone else. All the code I write is GPL'ed.
> > You don't need to own the copyright on any code in
> > order to be able to enforce the GPL. [...]
> Indeed, and in fact for a long time the copyright
> was owned by me before it was assigned to the FSF.
> It's not required per se, but generally speaking,
> there must be a Maintainer of the Software who
> believes in the ideals of the GNU system
I do believe in the ideal of the GNU system: to have
computer systems that consist entirely of libre
software.
> and will adhere to the GNU coding standards
That is too bureaucratic, not libre enough.
That's a great summary and an eye-opener on the whole situation. Everything aside, but isn't this FSF enforcement a little too much burden for some? Does it actually change anything? (apart from giving a bad sensation when you hear "now we own the copyright of your work")
I'm confused. The reason the FSF gives for copyright assignment is precisely in aid of their legal enforcement of the GPL. From their website [1]:
... enforcement of copyright is generally not possible
for distributors: only the copyright holder or someone
having assignment of the copyright can enforce the
license.
...
I reviewed the discussion but I still can't understand what the controversy is about. According to the following explanatory note from the GNU project, developers don't have to assign copyright to the FSF for it to be an official GNU project:
When the developers of a program make it a GNU package, they can decide either to give the copyright to the FSF so it can enforce the GPL for the package, or else to keep the copyright as well as the responsibility for enforcing the GPL.
My impression from that thread is the only problem some of the devs had was assigning copyright to the FSF. They insist on sticking to FSF's principles and in fact will continue to have their code hosted on Savannah because Github isn't Free enough.
`The GNU Project has a clone of Pico called nano which has been developed because Pico's earlier license was not a free software license, since distribution of a modified version of the code was ambiguously forbidden.[2] By default nano attempts to mimic Pico to replicate the environment users are used to. However it can be configured to offer mouse support, auto indentation, regular expression searches and even syntax highlighting making it more useful. Newer versions of Pico as part of Alpine are released under the Apache License.`
I use nano all the time when teaching Python, before moving to other more feature rich editors. It is perfect for quickly explaining the importance of plain text files. A big thanks to the developers for making software that is simple, ubiquitous, and lasting!
I think you're conflating the role of a host and the role of a OSS license.
As with most hosts, the issue of liability rests on the owner. I couldn't upload 50gb of pirated movies to github and cry "github save me, I used you and now I need you to protect me."
Your software license dictates your liability to users of your code.
GitHub is saying we're just a host, and we defer to the software liscensors on how their code should be used
Just read through their terms of service, and I don't see anything to that effect. You are responsible for not violating other people's copyright with stuff you upload to GitHub, and GitHub is not responsible for damage, etc. due to service outages. But that's it.
Also worth mentioning that liability laws can be rather different from country to country. Germany (and Austria iirc) is somewhat notorious in that regard as you can't completely "get rid of" liability and warranty. There's no public domain for example (technically that's still debated but the main opinion seems to be it's not possible for me to release anything as public domain, see §29 UrhG-D).
Nano is extremely valuable for people learning the system. Typical alternatives are vi and emacs, which are extremely opaque, to the point that it's not even obvious how to exit them. UNIX tutorials will often say "use control-C to kill a command" and then that doesn't even work for this!
Nano tells you how to use it right on the screen. Control-C still doesn't work, but it tells you how to exit. Saving files, paging, cut and paste commands are all shown. There's easily accessible help!
If you're learning UNIX then editing files is handy. Without nano, you'd have to spend a bunch of time learning how to use a text editor before you could do anything that needs text editing.
Not as arcane as vim, great for small edits without the oh-crap-what-have-I-pressed-force-quit-start-over phenomenon that I get in vi. 'Serious' editing is done in gedit...
It's nice to have on boot disks, small enough to fit alongside busybox which ships with a lite vi[1] that some don't care for.
I personally love vi and am a bit taken aback sometimes when visudo pulls up nano instead of vi because I haven't installed it or made it my default editor yet.
So I'm not sure this means much to me personally but I'm always sad to see members of the community part ways. Still, I wish them all the luck and thank them for their efforts.
Back in the 1990s thru early 2000s, I used to use pico before I became comfortable with vi. For someone coming from a DOS/Windows/OS/2 background originally, it was less of a learning curve. I never used nano much, but I imagine the same reasons might apply for some people today.
(I also used to use emacs a lot, I first used it on OS/2 under EMX, but there were systems on which pico was installed but emacs wasn't. Nowadays, I'm so used to vim, I start emacs and can't remember most of the keystrokes. Oh, and the first ever email client I used was Pine.)
Love nano - been using it for something like 18 years or whenever I had my first Linux server online. I couldn't survive a *nix environment without it.
No. The rift is not over the license itself. From the mail archive Benno states...
> > As you know, I will not assign my copyright to the FSF, nor to
> > anyone else. All the code I write is GPL'ed. You don't need to
> > own the copyright on any code in order to be able to enforce the
> > GPL. [...]
>
> Indeed, and in fact for a long time the copyright was owned by me
> before it was assigned to the FSF. It's not required per se, but
> generally speaking, there must be a Maintainer of the Software who
> believes in the ideals of the GNU system
I do believe in the ideal of the GNU system: to have computer systems
that consist entirely of libre software.
No, the project cannot just ditch the license that all of the code has been contributed under. It's still GPL. Your anti-GPL fervor will have to rest for awhile longer.
[+] [-] mikegerwitz|9 years ago|reply
First, Nano has _not_ left the GNU project; GNU Nano still does and will continue to exist. The current maintainer of GNU Nano---Chris Allegretta---was hoping to add Benno Schulenberg as a co-maintainer, citing numerous contributions by him. Unfortunately, Benno refused to accept GNU's maintainership agreement, and so was not appointed. Benno also did not want to assign copyright to the FSF for his contributions.
Instead, it seems, Benno decided to fork the project. But he did so with hostility: he updated the official GNU Nano website, rather than creating a website for the fork.
It's early, so there's still discussion going on, but again, to be clear: GNU Nano has absolutely not left GNU.
[+] [-] zx2c4|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm3|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|9 years ago|reply
Right, it's just that all the new revisions of Nano that anyone will use going forward have left GNU.
[+] [-] belorn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tomte|9 years ago|reply
That you intend to continue having a "GNU nano" doesn't change that. Just because it happened to be on your web space doesn't make it your project.
A project is first and foremost the people behind it. Not a hosting provider.
I consider you the fork. Without hostility.
Edit: I may have missed/confused the acting people here. I'm not sure anymore if my comment above really hits the nail on its head.
[+] [-] klakier|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|9 years ago|reply
They are obviously rooted in the fear that in fact the FSF cannot use code that is merely GPL-ed, if someone else owns the copyright.
"Use the GPL for your code to grant everyone rights and freedoms. Just not when giving to us; we would prefer your right, not your left, thank you very much."
There is a legitimate concern that someone apparently placing code under the GPL might not have the right to do so. But for that, an affidavit should be good enough, not an affidavit plus assignment of copyright to the FSF.
The paranoid copyright assignment obviously guards against the possibility that a rightfully proclaimed GPL can be retroactively revoked. Someone in the project changes their mind and says that these pieces which are wrote are no longer GPLed; not going forward, nor in any past revisions. (That author him or herself, not some previous employer or other third party, from whom permission had not been properly obtained to have that work under the GPL.)
If the FSF believes this to be a real threat, any group of users anywhere relying on the GPL should take the same view.
[+] [-] laughinghan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpark|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _pmf_|9 years ago|reply
In Germany, you cannot legally sign away copyright (i.e. signing away your copyright is either an empty action or may even void other agreements contained in a larger contract).
[+] [-] mydudesstop|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ArneBab|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonbanker|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangrossman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haddr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abetusk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ArneBab|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deevious|9 years ago|reply
Part of the e-mail thread discussing the move is here https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/2016-05/msg000...
I did't have the time to dig out the whole conversation history.
[+] [-] infodroid|9 years ago|reply
When the developers of a program make it a GNU package, they can decide either to give the copyright to the FSF so it can enforce the GPL for the package, or else to keep the copyright as well as the responsibility for enforcing the GPL.
Source: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html
---
FYI this is the start of the discussion thread:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nano-devel/2016-05/msg000...
[+] [-] supercheetah|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Avshalom|9 years ago|reply
The current maintainer is/was A) looking to pass on responsibilities B) not get copyright assignment like GNU projects are supposed to
so they just decided fuck it.
[+] [-] tapiwa|9 years ago|reply
Simple light editor without the overhead (read learning curve), of all the other big editors.
Sure, I might not write code in it, but when I need to edit a conf file or two, both on a server, and my desktop, it really hits the spot.
[+] [-] k__|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drinchev|9 years ago|reply
Strange how history rewrites itself.
1 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_(text_editor)
EDIT : Quotes from Wikipedia
`The GNU Project has a clone of Pico called nano which has been developed because Pico's earlier license was not a free software license, since distribution of a modified version of the code was ambiguously forbidden.[2] By default nano attempts to mimic Pico to replicate the environment users are used to. However it can be configured to offer mouse support, auto indentation, regular expression searches and even syntax highlighting making it more useful. Newer versions of Pico as part of Alpine are released under the Apache License.`
[+] [-] nailer|9 years ago|reply
Nothing has changed with this announcement except who own the copyrights to the open source code.
[+] [-] soyiuz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cronjobber|9 years ago|reply
> Plus, in order to use their services, you need to assume liability
That sounds bad, as in really bad. One important function of Open Source licenses is to get as far away from liability as possible.
Do people here know whether that's just a misunderstanding, or a realistic risk of keeping code on Github?
[+] [-] oceanswave|9 years ago|reply
As with most hosts, the issue of liability rests on the owner. I couldn't upload 50gb of pirated movies to github and cry "github save me, I used you and now I need you to protect me."
Your software license dictates your liability to users of your code.
GitHub is saying we're just a host, and we defer to the software liscensors on how their code should be used
[+] [-] nerdponx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kriro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bechampion|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeash|9 years ago|reply
Nano tells you how to use it right on the screen. Control-C still doesn't work, but it tells you how to exit. Saving files, paging, cut and paste commands are all shown. There's easily accessible help!
If you're learning UNIX then editing files is handy. Without nano, you'd have to spend a bunch of time learning how to use a text editor before you could do anything that needs text editing.
[+] [-] Nursie|9 years ago|reply
Not as arcane as vim, great for small edits without the oh-crap-what-have-I-pressed-force-quit-start-over phenomenon that I get in vi. 'Serious' editing is done in gedit...
[+] [-] xrstf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smhenderson|9 years ago|reply
I personally love vi and am a bit taken aback sometimes when visudo pulls up nano instead of vi because I haven't installed it or made it my default editor yet.
So I'm not sure this means much to me personally but I'm always sad to see members of the community part ways. Still, I wish them all the luck and thank them for their efforts.
[1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Learning_the_vi_Editor/BusyBox...
[+] [-] skissane|9 years ago|reply
(I also used to use emacs a lot, I first used it on OS/2 under EMX, but there were systems on which pico was installed but emacs wasn't. Nowadays, I'm so used to vim, I start emacs and can't remember most of the keystrokes. Oh, and the first ever email client I used was Pine.)
[+] [-] cdevs|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wtbob|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] broodbucket|9 years ago|reply
old habits die hard
[+] [-] stuaxo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ChicagoDave|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jm0codes|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Annatar|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rmmm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davexunit|9 years ago|reply
No, the project cannot just ditch the license that all of the code has been contributed under. It's still GPL. Your anti-GPL fervor will have to rest for awhile longer.