fundamental wrote:
So, hopefully this isn't entirely out of place. For those following other mailing lists, there has been ongoing action in regards to non-* and a current fork. The fork had plenty of good reasons for occurring, though it would seem that the current way the fork is represented has escalated the situation. Ideally things can deescalate such that things can co-exist. By no means am I implying that people need to work together on a given project. That's their own choice.
Let me first say that I appreciate someone is stepping up. I've said enough about this issue and it takes me too much time and energy to really accomplish something, it's up to others now, but let me try to give a 'short' reaction.
The first and major problem is the ongoing involvement of linuxaudio.org. Finally they won't release as linuxaudio.org anymore, but tt's still maintained by linuxaudio.org thoug,h as is apparent because of the fact it is still hosted and maintained on the linuxaudio.org github page. Issues are reported there etc. etc. It's more then hosting alone, moreover there is no practical need to host it for them.
1) Clear and simple: they should remove
all connection to linuxaudio.org. Host the project on their own website or github page. It restores balance and keeps linuxaudio.org neutral. This is what forks do normally. Nobody wants a 'hostile' fork of his GPL project being hosted/maintained by linuxaudio.org suddenly.
2) The naming. NSM stands for Non-Session-Manager and it should stay so. Of course you can build your own GUI around it, like it's done with Agordejo and Raysession. NSM should be treated as it was trademarked, the same way as Tytel has done with Vital I think.
The disadvantages and 'not so nice' points about the name New-Session-Manager are discussed elsewhere, I won't repeat it here. Somehow, there should be a other name.
3) As long the NSM API stays the same, there is no real problem, but they claimed the API and are changing it. I'm not a programmer, but the original author states: " I specifically designed NSM to be modular and extensible, designing in support for such things as alternative GUis". And from what I can see most extra features are possible to implement via a alternative GUI. If not, they probably need to design a way to make extensions for NSM or so, but again, I'm not a programmer, the original author is perfectly capable of giving his vision on this matter, so ideally he would do it.
Of course, saying that this is 'the community version', implicitly implies that the original version isn't a community version. It's not up to them to decide, I would say that with 30 apps supporting it... It's not nice to say it, but if they don't want to remove it, what can you do?
What can be done is: remove all connection with linuxaudio.org.
Next to that you're dependent of how much they want to take in account the hard work of the original author, who solved a major problem for the community, which they copied. How much the emotion of revenge should play a role here. How much they care about keeping NSM compatible with their implementation. How far they want to go with the fragmentation of the NSM environment and it's API. How much 'feature creep' is wise to implement. It's GPL, so people can do with it what they want more or less. The license doesn't give the original developer almost no protection. You would hope that some protection comes from the community and especially the developers of the fork themselves. The last thing you want is linuxaudio.org hosting and maintaining such a fork.
This is my take on the matter. I don't have the intention to respond on further discussion, but I found it exemplary that the discussion was going in a direction where people warn developers to understand the licenses fully. I think that should say something.
I've done enough in this realm, it's up to others to pick things up. Start with point 1 I would suggest.