Re: views_partner

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- "Chahine M. Hamila" <mch at chaham dot com> wrote:
> Nadim Shaikli wrote:
> 
> > I hope I'm not rocking the boat here, but I don't think I agree with
> > this nebulous "social contract" -- no gotcha's from our end, none
> > from their end.  I would hate to see a "communist contract" from them
> > for instance in which I'd have to go peer over every detail and waste
> > time studying it :-)
> 
> If it's about PR one could change the name, no problem. It was just inspired
> by the Debian name, but we could as well call it the "Arabeyes commitment"
> for example. I agree with you "social contract" sounds a bit communist;)
> That said, it's not a neboulus:) you really should read the Debian Social
> Contract. All it says is more or less we want free software, GPL is okay, BSD
> is okay, Apache is okay, so on...

I think the point is not so much the name - but the insistence on something
that is NOT very popular or well-known -- I would be much more comfortable
if we state the following "GPL-friendly, BSD-friendly, Apache-friendly -
open/free source friendly, everything-friendly" instead of 'Arabeyes 
Commitment'.  That's much cleaner and simpler to comprehend.

I simply don't think it would be appropriate to hand people a link to go
read to understand were we stand -- we are part of the MAINSTREAM "open
source" movement (as you and I understand it - no funny SUN biz) and there
is nothing peculiar about our vision/stance -- that needs to be in bold.

> > How do we protect OUR interests in having "Free Software" vs. "Open Source"
> > and "Social Contract" vs. "GPL-friendly" ??
> 
> Open Source is not okay. Take a look at the Sun Community thing. The last
> thing you would call it is free software. We're not even talking about
> free like in money, but freedom of development. Open Source only means
> you can read the source, more or less.

We are shackling ourselves because of other people's/company's greed
and deceit - Sun might have bent the rules enough to where people
are now starting to use new "labels", but again, personally, until
those labels become more mainstream I'd stay clear away from them.
I realize that what you note is more protection for "us", but I'm
coming from the angle of people's understanding (and my fear of
alienating them).

The way I view this - get 100 people into a room that have used linux/unix
and surf the net abit (slashdot, linuxtoday, freshmeat) and you ask them
about "social contract" or "Arabeyes Commitment" or "Free Software" or
"Open Source Software" and what will their response be -- the percentage
of them knowing where you stand and what you are all about ?  I might be
naive (and silly) in this, but we are catering to newbies to some extent
and as such I don't want to hit them up with semi NEW rules (licenses).

Alas, I've said all I can -- I know we won't convince each other, and this
is a group democratic effort, let's come to a consensus and move forward.

 - Nadim

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