Re: OpenToken

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> writes:

> Stephen Leake writes:
>> Ludovic Brenta writes:
>>
>>> On Aug 30, 12:51 am, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I actually have two slightly different versions of OpenToken; one for
>>>> GDS (my work project) and one for webcheck (a home project). I've been
>>>> waiting for an excuse to merge them; this could be it.
>>>
>>> Great news. In fact, since OpenToken seems dead upstream, you might as
>>> well adopt it for your own and host it on a public revision control
>>> system. Ada-France's monotone server is yours if you want it;
>>> otherwise you can go to SourceForge, Gna!, Berlios, Tigris or
>>> Savannah.
>>
>> What are the tradeoffs between doing that, and becoming a Debian
>> maintainer for OpenToken? or both?
>
> OpenToken already has a Debian maintainer, his name is Reto Buerki[1],
> so there is no requirement for you to maintain the package in Debian.
> You may, of course, offer to co-maintain the package with Reto.
>
> [1] http://packages.qa.debian.org/o/opentoken.html

Ok.

> The one thing that OpenToken lacks is an active upstream author and
> web site. The web site should have:
>
> - a public source code repository
> - a public bug database
> - optionally, a mailing list.
>
> Since there are currently few users, I proposed the "lightest"
> solution requiring near zero set-up time:
>
> - Ada-France for the public source code repository (possibly with
>   mirrors, since monotone is distributed)
> - the Debian bug tracking system as a public bug database
> - comp.lang.ada as the mailing list (supplemented by each bug in the
>   Debian BTS, which is a mailing list on its own).

Works for me. I can put a simple page on my current website stating
where things are. I can host a mailing list on my website if that
becomes necessary, like I have for Emacs Ada mode.

I'm currently focussed on adding a major new feature to monotone and
Emacs DVC, so I probably won't get to doing this for OpenToken for a
couple months. Unless I feel like taking a break :).

>> I chose gNewSense because it is advertised as 100% Free Software (in
>> the GPL sense). For example, the wireless card won't work in the
>> laptop I'm getting, because there is no Free Software driver for it.
>
>> FSF established gNewSense because the main part of Debian is not 100%
>> free in this sense; see http://www.gnewsense.org/Main/Features.
>
> I remember that time.  There was opposition within Debian to removing
> non-free drivers from the kernel, and even some flame wars.  But the
> Free Software advocates finally got their way, such that now the
> kernel in Debian is split into the main, contrib and non-free sections
> (i.e. they split the non-free drivers into their own packages).  One
> can use only the main section and get essentially what gNewSense
> offers.

Ah, that makes sense. So http://www.gnewsense.org/Main/Features is out
of date, or at least misleading.

>> The politics is supporting a laptop/Gnu/Linux vendor that offers
>> gNewSense; I hope that promotes the cause of 100% Free Software in
>> some way - they can report one more customer interested in it. In
>> fact, they did say they are working on a 100% free wireless solution.
>
> Could you please tell me who that vendor is? I'll be interested, come
> time to replace my current laptop (which I got from HP with only
> FreeDOS installed).

Los Alamos Computers http://laclinux.com/

There are several others that offer Debian; I got the list from the
debian.org website.

>> Eventually, I'd like to get a Free Software BIOS. That may be the only
>> way to avoid DRM, if the DRM advocates get their way. The book
>> Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge presents a scary vision of such a thing;
>> you can't even order a pizza without a trust certificate, and Gnu Hurd
>> is illegal, but the choice of hackers. No mention of Debian :).
>>
>> Explicitly supporting gNewSense is one way to encourage Free Software
>> BIOS development. At least I tell myself that :).
>
> Yes, at FOSDEM 2007 I attended Ronald G. Minnich's presentation of
> LinuxBIOS[2].  From memory, the speaker is from Lawrence Livermore
> National Laboratory or similar, and uses LinuxBIOS on supercomputers.
> The part I liked the most was when he described how Intel tried to
> sell them their new and improved BIOS architecture into which hardware
> vendors could add their own proprietary plug-ins.  Guess what the
> reaction was from people who simulate nuclear weapons on said
> hardware?

Sounds like the current thread on emacs-devel about adding support for
dynamically loading C modules (dlls).

> [2] http://archive.fosdem.org/2007/schedule/events/linuxbios

I had not realized this was that far along. I'll bug LAC about
supporting it for Thinkpad. 

--
-- Stephe