etoys now available in Debian's non-free repository

[Jim Gettys]

Albert,

There are many communities out there; some of which have used/use even
closed source tools for developing free code.  That does not make the
code itself any less free.

Using other tools may have other costs, in particular a higher entry
cost for contributors, but it doesn't make the resulting software less
free.
                          - Jim


On Thu, 2008-06-26 at 16:13 -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote: 
> 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).
> _______________________________________________
> Devel mailing list
> Devel at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
-- 
Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org>
One Laptop Per Child