[License-discuss] Discourse hosting

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Thorsten Glaser (tg at mirbsd.de):

> Rick Moen dixit:
> 
> >I appreciate your speaking, Kevin.  I continue to be curious about
> >whether users would be expected to enter a contractual relationship with
> [ any third party ]
> >in order to participate.
> 
> +1
> 
> This is something that occurs more and more, but a bad thing.
> See also: http://mako.cc/writing/hill-free_tools.html
> 
> Thanks for raising this point,

I appreciate your comment, Thorsten:  Distinguo:  Discourse's Ruby &
JavaScript codebase appears to be fully open source under GNU GPLv2
and thus potentially has a future even if any of sundry bad outcomes 
befall sponsoring firm CDCK, Inc. (which I of course hope doesn't
happen), and (like the equally monstrous and poorly performing GitLab
codebase) can be self-hosted by anyone wishing to do so.  Thus, at least
for now, Benjamin Mako Hill's essay's mention of the BitKeeper
misadventure, etc., is inapt.  Discourse the codebase _is_ a
free-software tool.

(As an employee of VA Linux Systems / VA Software Corporation at the
time SourceForge was quietly taken proprietary, I know that sponsoring
for-profit corporations can and do change terms, and there is no 'free'
outsourced hosting to such firms, only hosting where contractual
consideration is sometimes non-monetary.)

-- 
Cheers,                "I never quarrel with a man who buys ink by the barrel."
Rick Moen                    -- Rep. Charles B. Brownson (R-Indiana), ca. 1960
rick at linuxmafia.com
McQ! (4x80)