[Savannah-hackers-public] Re: Projects that mistakenly chose the Savannah "GNU" project type

[Sylvain Beucler]

Hi,

On Sat, Apr 16, 2005 at 12:33:51PM -0400, Karl Berry wrote:
> Hi Sylvain,
> 
> Thanks for writing.
> 
>     I wonder if we sometimes forward you Savannah project submission whose
>     author didn't really mean to make his project dubbed GNU. 
> 
> I have wondered that too.  We have gotten quite a few requests in the
> past week or two.  Many of the projects seem fairly obscure.  Not that I
> have anything against them, or think we shouldn't evaluate them, but I
> think it would be good to explain a little more up front what it means
> to be GNU.
> 
> I can imagine a couple things to do (not mutually exclusive):
> 
> 1) make the default selection be "choose one", instead of "Official GNU
>    Software".

That wouldn't be a bad idea. I'll see if it's ok to modify Savane that way.


> 2) explain, probably on a separate page that is linked, the implications
>    of offering to be a GNU project.  I can send you some text, or maybe
>    we should just put it on www.gnu.org (so we can maintain it) and you
>    can link to it.

There is some text on the project type selection page explaining the
issue, but it is long and I think people tend not to read it:

---
You should now specify whether your project is already part of the GNU project 
or not. A program is considered part of the GNU project only if it has been 
approved by the coordinator of the GNU project (Richard M. Stallman). That 
approval is usually accompanied by an e-mail message stating that you have 
become an official GNU maintainer.

The source repository and web pages for a GNU package are not hosted in 
Savannah but in ftp.gnu.org and www.gnu.org. However, the webpages CVS 
repository is in Savannah (administrators of GNU projects can also choose to 
use other FTP and HTTP servers outside the gnu.org domain).

Developers of GNU packages must agree to some rules and coding standards. If 
you are considering to request the GNU project to include your software, read 
carefully Information for Maintainers of GNU Software and the GNU Coding 
Standards.

If you want your package to become part of the GNU project, you can request it 
in this step, by choosing GNU as the project type below. In that case we will 
send a request to the GNU project to review your source code; your project will 
be approved as a non-GNU project in Savannah and if it gets approved by GNU, we 
will later move it to the GNU area. If you did not provide a URL to the source 
code in your project description, we will not send the request and you should 
ask yourself the GNU project to evaluate your program (in that case please do 
not enter GNU in the project type below).

Assigning copyright of your program to the FSF is a separated issue; it does 
not make your program automatically part of the GNU project. And GNU 
maintainers are not obliged to assign copyright of their programs to the FSF 
either. Transferring copyright to the FSF serves a legal purpose: to allow the 
FSF to defend you in court should someone violate your program's license. 
Assigning copyright to the FSF requires signing a copyright transfer form that 
can be obtained from the FSF.

---


We also have a FAQ:
https://savannah.gnu.org/faq/?admin=&group_id=5802&question=Project_-_What_does_it_mean_to_become_a_GNU_package.txt

I do think the FAQ text can be found somewhere at www.gnu.org, maybe
at the GNU Evaluation page, but I cannot find it :/

It would be good to make the project type help text (very) short, with
a link to a www.gnu.org page that discusses "becoming GNU" in detail,
including what is mentioned in both the FAQ entry and the current
explanation text.

I think it would be good indeed if we could point to an official
location that can be updated by GNU Eval / the GNU webmasters if need
be.


> 3) require people to fill out a simple cgi form to offer their software
>    -- the same form we send them now in email.  It is logistically
>    impossible to put a cgi on www.gnu.org (long story), but I imagine
>    that you can write one for savannah with no trouble.

A simpler solution would be that we directly send the user to
questionnaire, telling them to send it to address@hidden That
way it will require an action from the user to actually start the
evaluation process.

Is there any advantage in setting up a CGI instead?

Both solutions requires that we can access an up-to-date version of
the questionnaire (or that we be sent it each change you change it).

-- 
Sylvain