On Oct 16, 2011 1:26 PM, "Martin Owens" <doctormo@...400...> wrote:
On Sun, 2011-10-16 at 21:50 +0400, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
In general I would prefer Inkscape to stay out of policies and politics.
Inkscape should probably stay involved in it's own policies, and that may include policies on free and open source for technical reasons.
We certainly are involved with our own policies. This is one of the reasons our board exists, to avoid the politics and to protect the project on every level possible. Any developers with political agendas should take their issues to the board's list... but be warned, just because you have strong feelings doesn't mean the board will agree. For those who don't know, the board is comprized of: Bryce Harrington, Dr. Nathan Hurst, MenTaLguY, Ted Gould, Aaron Spike and myself.
In prior board votes, open/free solutions *always* take priority over non-open solutions... however that doesn't mean that they're always completely excluded. Basically, in a recent vote that I still need to share the results of with the list (it will be posted by the end of the week), the board has shown priority for the following order: FOSS principles come first, secondly we don't shun things that are gratis, and thirdly we still respect the commercial side (we have a list of Inkscape books on our site for example). Also speaking of votes, since our development community can't seem to reach a consensus about a change in version numbering, I'm going to be taking that to the board as well.
Political issues are flat out tough. They have a tendency to divide communities, and this is one of the ways the board helps protect the integrity of the community... by being there to prevent people from getting at each other's throats over ideologies.
While I agree we shouldn't talk politics, I also disagree that we should stop talking Inkscape's own internal politics on Free and Open Source. It's clear that lots of users and many developers care that Inkscape is Free Software and care that development happens with that consideration in mind. That's why we always assumed the consensus was pro-foss, it's weaved into the projects cultural fabric.
I think that it's a HUGE assumption to think that "lots of users" care about Free and Open Source. I talk to, interact with, and read comments from our users generally 6/7 days of the week. An overwhelming majority of them care primarily about one thing, it's free (as in price) and they can use it and feel good about not breaking the law. Seriously, do you know how aggravating it is to see people refer to it as "freeware" just about every day? People who care about FOSS principals would never misrepresent a proper foss project like that. Similarly, of the handful of people I've personally switched to ubuntu, they care about price (also in the form of getting more time out of aging hardware), legality, and community... not politics.
User argument aside... as mentioned above, FOSS principals are a priority of the project.
I do admit however that I'm biased as I'd never be found working on the windows port and certainly wouldn't delay the release. I have politics and it does effect how I see situations, if you cut that out of the discussion here then we're all going to be left trying to guess what the hell each of us is actually trying to achieve. Keep it in but keep it respectful.
As the the effective release/project manager for a few years now, I *hate* delaying releases for Windows. Likewise, Bryce hated delaying releases for Windows. If those devs don't step up, why should everyone else suffer? But as long as we choose to continue supporting that platform, it's one of the evils that comes with it. By the same token, I have the same level of loathing for our Linux policies too. I hate that we have policy which blocks us from requiring the latest and greatest library versions because we need to support LTS releases for the sake of not leaving out potential new developers. As much as I hate these things, I still respect why we handle things like we do... true openness, inclusiveness, and a unified community.
Cheers, Josh