Re: Spam message when using CVS for webpages

[Bob Proulx]

Ineiev wrote:
> Savane is the free software hosting system savannah.gnu.org runs.
>
> sv_membersh is the restricted shell used as the login shell for Savane users
> when they connect via SSH.
>
> Savane released under the AGPL; offering the corresponding source code
> is a requirement of the AGPL.

I spent some time looking at this issue and my assessment is that
sv_membersh is only a peripheral part of Savannah at best.  It isn't
needed for Savannah to operate.  It's a security gate that we use to
protect the host from potentially malicious activity or potentially
accidental harm.  It does not need to be savane software and might be
any suitable component program.

Even though Savannah as a whole is distributed under the AGPL Savannah
makes use of many programs which are licensed under other licenses
such as the other various GPL versions and other permissive licenses.
That the whole of Savannah is available under the AGPL does not make a
requirement that every component used in Savannah be forced into the
AGPL.

For example in Savannah cron is used.  If that were true then it would
be required to re-license cron from GPLv2+ to the AGPL.  Savannah uses
git and git is licensed under the GPLv2.  Savannah uses Subversion is
licensed under the Apache-2.0 license.  And so on and so forth.
Simply using these components does not require that the license always
be advertised.

For example GNU ls does not emit its license upon every invocation.
That would interfere with its primary function.  But ls will emit its
license information when this is asked for with ls --version.

I join our fellow colleagues asking to remove this license
advertisement as being harmful to the primary function of the site.

Thanks!
Bob