On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Luca Barbato <lu_z...@gentoo.org> wrote: > > > eudev is a Gentoo project is not Gentoo. Same could be said for OpenRC. >
OpenRC isn't a Gentoo project, at least, it wasn't in the past. The social contract defines Gentoo as a collection of free knowledge, which includes "free software contributed by various developers to the Gentoo Project." The social contract is meaningless if it doesn't apply to Gentoo projects. Gentoo projects cover all the arch teams, portage, and all of our documentation. Projects are just how we organize the administration of Gentoo. They aren't something distinct from Gentoo. When you work on a Gentoo project, you work on Gentoo. > I guess you misunderstood what is Gentoo and what is a Gentoo Project. > Enlighten us, what is Gentoo, if nothing in any Gentoo project is Gentoo? What exactly do you think that section of the Social Contract actually covers? Or is it a pretty document we stick on our website but ignore when it is somehow inconvenient? As I said, I'm fine with making exceptions if it makes sense and furthers the overall mission of Gentoo. However, we shouldn't just ignore the social contract without any kind of consideration at all. If the community doesn't like the social contract we could of course consider amending it as well. Gentoo isn't GitHub. When people donate money to Gentoo they're not donating so that a club of elite coders can use the infrastructure to host just anything that suits their fancy. The reason that we let any Gentoo developer just start a project is because it helps promote innovation and cuts through bureaucracy. That doesn't mean that Gentoo holds no interest in the work that is done under its name. I think that Duncan pointed out a great reason to use LGPL, and using a license that lets us better collaborate with the overall FOSS community is something I think is well-aligned with Gentoo's mission (We Will Give Back to the Free Software Community). However, if we use LGPL it should because of something like this, and not simply be because those working on the project picked it. If for whatever reason the fork diverges to a point where we aren't giving back in the form of patches to upstream then I'd argue that it would make sense to move back to the GPL (something trivially done with or without copyright assignment due to the nature of the LGPL). Rich
