Re: Git mirrors

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>
> Cc: ofv@wanadoo.es,
>     lekktu@gmail.com,
>     emacs-devel@gnu.org,
>     miles@gnu.org
> Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:55:04 +0900
> 
> Eli Zaretskii writes:
> 
>  > > Because most of the projects in the class you have mentioned produce
>  > > free *software*, but their political principles are those of the open
>  > > source movement.  Emacs is different because it *is* a Free Software
>  > > project.
>  > 
>  > I specifically mentioned Gawk and GDB, which are GNU projects as much
>  > as Emacs.
> 
> And therefore should follow the same GNU policies as does Emacs.  No?
> So those aren't relevant examples, as the question is "why is the GNU
> policy what it is?"

You've changed the subject (and deleted the context that makes that
clear).  I guess this is no longer a rational/serious discussion.

The examples are relevant because these are GNU projects, and so the
are NOT different from Emacs.  If they provide only git, Emacs can
provide just bzr.

>  > Choosing tools solely on technical capability isn't the policy, true.
>  > But that's not really the point, because I was talking about the
>  > behavior _after_ a decision has been made, not about the decision
>  > itself.  IOW, about "now", and not about "then".
> 
> That's cheating, of course.

Are we up to ad hominem yet?

> Óscar was talking about both, and specifically asked why such a
> policy exists in the first place.

No, Óscar was talking about the past.  There's nothing in the present
condition that can justify his views and gripes.  He made a decision
years ago, and he chooses not to revisit that decision given the
changed situation.  That's his prerogative.  But this discussion is
about the situation _now_.  So any arguments about what might have
been true 2 or 3 years ago, but are no longer true now, are not really
relevant.

> If you really want these discussions to go away, I think the best
> approach is to explain the policy, justify it, put it in the FAQ, and
> then shut off future discussion with "off-topic" and a pointer to the
> FAQ and an appropriate venue for policy discussion such as
> gnu.misc.discuss.

The policy was explained many times.  Richard just explained it again.
Nevertheless, I don't expect these discussions to go away, probably
because it's an emotional issue that has very little rational basis.
Witness the fact that this time, no one even tried to claim that bzr
performance is bad.  My conclusion is that technical factors no longer
matter.  It's a religious argument.

>  > > Promoting an unusable tool merely because it had the GNU label is most
>  > > definitely unfriendly competition.
>  > 
>  > Bzr is not unusable, so this argument is simply false.
> 
> Eli, if you want to make absolutist arguments like that, start writing
> in the propositional calculus.  If you want to continue in English,
> then don't be silly.

Are we at ad hominem yet?

> With regard to the question of "in this case, how much truth is 'much
> truth'?", see my response to Juanma.

I see nothing relevant there to this discussion.