etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository

[Albert Cahalan]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 1:38 PM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> Am 26.06.2008 um 10:53 schrieb Albert Cahalan:
>
>>>> This idea of applying patch collections is disturbing. It reminds
>>>> me of the terrible mess that Minix was back in 1991, when the
>>>> license permitted people to share patches but not code with
>>>> the patches applied. Here you have a technical limit instead
>>>> of a legal one, but I expect that the result is not much different.
>>>
>> I got that. The fundamental problem is the patch collection.
>> There is a problem even if you can distribute the result.
>> Patches need to be applied. If you do that, and distribute
>> a blob, then we're back to the blob problem. If you don't do
>> that, then we have the Minix problem.
>
> I don't actually disagree with that. Smalltalk is an excellent personal
> computing environment (well, you would expect that from the guys who largely
> invented personal computing). It does not fare nearly as well for
> distributed, collaborative development (although the Squeak community has
> developed work-arounds, like Monticello, a nice distributed SCM).
>
> But: Why should these shortcomings in development style be a reason to not
> include it in a Linux distribution? It's not like if every other app is
> well-coded or well-maintained.

The very foundation of the Linux development community
(which Squeak developers are asking to be accepted by)
includes an expectation that software can be handled in
certain ways. Any person can browse the source, with the
worst case being that one must download an archive file
or perform a check-out. (better: web git/cvs/svn access)
Any person can use external tools, which themselves are
likewise open, to view/edit/save/create/share the source.
(better: those tools are standard, like emacs/gimp/audacity)
We also expect a certain degree of openness (not a lot of
non-public communication) and a certain degree of modularity
(parts are interchangable across similar projects and versions,
allowing distributions to mix and match).