KDM plans and lightDM

[Harald Sitter]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 8:16 AM, Martin Gräßlin <mgraesslin at kde.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:29:45 -0400, Shaun Reich <predator106 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> lightDM is also headed by my dear friend Canonical, as is clearly seen.
>
> Serious question: does anyone know if it requires Canonical's copyright
> assignment to contribute to lightDM? If yes we can stop any further
> discussion right here IMHO.

<apachelogger> robert_ancell: ahoy, is LightDM covered by the
canonical contributor agreement?
<robert_ancell> apachelogger, no
<apachelogger> robert_ancell: ever going to be?
<robert_ancell> apachelogger, no
<robert_ancell> apachelogger, the greeter we develop will be afaik,
but the rest of it not

> There are of course more issues to think about when considering using
> something in our workspace that's developed by Canonical. What about we need
> changes Canonical does not like for what reason ever? Who of us can work
> with launchpad and bazaar? It's not the environment we are used to work with
> (same true for GNOME devs who want to participate in development). Personal
> opinion: if Canonical wants other to use it as real cross-desktop, the first
> step should be move the code into freedesktop's git repository.

Indeed, issues worth considering.

I personally believe that "wanting to have something the other party
does not" is really a global issue to all of free software. If I want
Amarok to be able to remote control my space ship, but the Amarok
developers do not, then there is little I can do about that as a
non-contributor. Well, except for trying to convince them from the
long-term advantage that such a feature would provide. If however I
would want Phonon to have such a feature, it is more likely to get
accepted as I am contributor to Phonon. I suppose it is a bit of a two
class society for every project those-that-do-stuff vs.
those-that-don't. While we should keep this in mind, I do not
generally think that it is something to base decisions on. From the
preemptive fear of not having 100% of control we'd otherwise have to
clone every library we use. Well, actually even the OS. Hello KDEOS ;)

I agree with your argument that code should be hosted in a FDO git
repo, though I personally believe that Launchpad  is from a management
perspective much easier to use for small projects as it puts every
aspect of management into the hands of the project itself (commit
access to repos, bug management etc. etc.). So, I can completely
understand why one would be using LP even as a freedesktop.org
project/thing, even if I find it not sensible at all to do this while
using the freedesktop.org website, thus fragmenting one's project
*shrug*.
But generally speaking I also see this is as a non-issue in terms of
the discussion at hand. The hosting system in particular is an
implementation detail of forming grounds to collaborate on. Now, to
ask anyone to use a ground we are familiar with (vs. one the other
party is), we'd first have to know that we want to collaborate. At any
rate it probably does not make sense to take such things into account
for any technical discussion as long as the system in use is easily
accessible. Otherwise all of free software would be using Git, not
because it is superior, but simply because everyone else does.

regards,
Harald