Re: Issues cooperation

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

      The
    portions of it that are AT&T clearly are not free software.
    However, the project as a whole has a large chunk of GPLed code
    (possibly the majority).

Is the free code useful without the AT&T non-free code?  If so, there
is a fairly easy solution: make a separate release of the free code,
not including the AT&T package, and recommend that release.  I will
try to recruit someone to do this work, if it would solve the problem.

If, however, the free parts depend on the non-free code, that spoils
all of them.  Unless and until AT&T makes the platform free, or
someone else writes a replacement free platform, we cannot recommend
any of it.

    Have you subscribed to the ggobi development lists ? or contacted
    their developers ?

A few months ago I asked the GNOME webmasters if they could tell
me the email address of the ggobi developers, but I never got
an answer.  However, about the same time I spoke with the developer
of another AT&T program, Graphviz, which uses a similar license.
He wanted to try to get AT&T to make it free software, and thought
he had a chance--but I never heard back from him, so I think it did
not occur.

I would still like to talk with the ggobi developers to see
if we can work with them to solve this problem.  If you could
tell me their email address, that would be useful.

In the mean time, we have to address the situation as it stands.

    My judgement is that they are mostly free, and becoming more so
    with time.

Do you mean that they are steadily replacing the non-free software
with free software?  If so, they are on the track to solve the
problem.  (If that will take considerable time, we should still
delete the link for now, but we can tell them we support their efforts.)

However, if they are just adding more free software to the package,
that path doesn't lead to a solution.  In fact, it makes the problem
worse, because the free software makes the non-free program more
attractive.

Perhaps when you say "becoming more free" you mean that the same old
non-free program is a smaller fraction of the (increasingly large)
total package.  That doesn't bring us closer to having a free
replacement for it.  The meaningful standard of "becoming more free"
is "getting closer to being entirely free".

Such situations are not new.  A major example occurred six years ago.
Much of the free software community was enthusiastic about a large
free software project that had just one fatal flaw: it was based on a
non-free library package.

Some in the community felt that the large and increasing body of free
software in KDE made it ok to disregard the non-free status of Qt.  We
did not agree--we said that non-free Qt was unacceptable regardless of
how much free software was based on it.  So we launched a project to
replace the whole combination.  We launched GNOME.

I have no wish to penalize the current developers, because this is not
a mere matter of personalities.  It is a matter of showing clearly
which direction we are headed.  We have to reinforce the understanding
that accepting non-free programs as if they were legitimate parts of our
community leads to the wrong destination.