Re: Git mirrors

[Barry Warsaw]

On Oct 13, 2011, at 02:09 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

>Although the software is free, in practice the Bazaar project is a
>wholly-owned subsidiary of a corporation that has used proprietary software
>or ASP/SaaS based on undistributed software on a large scale in its products
>(eg, Launchpad itself, proprietary at its launch but since freed, I believe).

Launchpad is licensed under the AGPL, so yes, it is free software.

>If the "Use GNU" policy is to make sense, I think the criterion
>proposed by Vijay Lakshminarayanan should be applied:
>
>    The reason to support GNU projects over others is that it is the
>    stated goal of GNU that all distributed software should be Free
>    ....  To this end, any software project that shares the same goals
>    will be supported.
>
>I don't think that Bazaar fits Vijay's description well at all.  It is
>a commercial enterprise in support of the Launchpad product and
>Canonical's consulting business first and foremost, and software
>freedom hardly ever enters the discussion -- rather it is quite taken
>for granted.

Both Launchpad and Bazaar are free software.  Both provide significant support
for free software, the former by hosting many free software projects, and the
latter by being the native dVCS for many free software projects.  Developers
of both systems actively care about the needs of free software developers, and
like most conscientious, honorable, dedicated, devoted, hard-working, and
overworked free software developers, would do what they can within the
resources they have to improve the support for other free software.

-Barry

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