[copyleft-next] Use of Gitorious and GitHub

Joshua Gay jgay at fsf.org
Mon Dec 3 16:49:09 UTC 2012



On 11/30/2012 12:15 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> On 11/30/2012 11:50 AM, Joshua Gay wrote:
>> Supporting github is a ruinous compromise because their policies work
>> against our aims in the free software movement in the long term.
> 
> Actually, why is that so? 

Even if we put aside the freedom of network services argument, let's
consider the software that both gitorious and github distribute and ask
users to run locally when visiting their respective websites.

Now, since these are the sites where you are hosting the copyleft-next,
for the sake of this discussion instead of referring to them as
gitorious or github, I will simply refer to these as your sites and the
software on them as software you are distributing.

First let's look at <https://github.com/richardfontana/copyleft-next>.
Here you are offering the following software programs to users and you
are both asking and encouraging them to run it:

*
<https://a248.e.akamai.net/assets.github.com/assets/frameworks-57542e0cba19d068168099f287c117efa142863c.js>
*
<https://a248.e.akamai.net/assets.github.com/assets/github-650ee832daf5d46d78829c3f98d1e97bab858056.js>

The above software you are distributing and asking users to run is
poorly licensed proprietary software.

Now let's look at the software you are distributing and asking users to
run on gitorious:

* <https://gitorious.org/javascripts/all.js?1354192091>

While not perfect (I would like to see a better offer of source and a
more obvious link to the corresponding source on your site), you've
certainly done a much better job with this one than you have with the
other. And, I trust this site of yours more than I do the other one.

Josh


More information about the copyleft-next mailing list