Hello

I've sent a v2 for one of the patches from my last series. But since
quite a few points I brough up in various earlier emails remain
untackled, I'd like to try to gather them all in one place.

Some of them will require me (or someone else) to propose patches.
Other are questions or similar matters I'd like to see explained.


Incidentally, there are many submissions that appear unresolved. Patches
marked as 'PROPOSED', e-mails without a single reply and improvement/bug
reports that have not been acted on. Some of course have been obsoleted
or dealt with and are simply not marked as such, but that isn't
everything.

To give some examples:
* "Fix punctuation errors from content/learn/participate/assets.md" was
  applied in 6646ac90, but isn't marked as 'APPLIED':
  <https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/writefreesoftware.org/patches/42394>
* "Change the dark theme color from blue/white to orange/warm" apart
  from proposing a patch, mentioned what else maybe needs to be done and
  indirectly requested feedback. The patch was applied, but the rest of
  the message didn't really get an answer.
* "URL page hierarchy" got no reply – even though it had raised a
  sensible point. It didn't come with a patch, but maybe the author
  wanted some feedback first – who knows? Now it's burried at the bottom
  of the second page and probably won't be picked up unless the author
  really cares about it.

I think some of these problems stem from shortcomings of the Source Hut
lists UI. Since one cannot quickly tell which items need further action,
missing them is pretty easy. Worse yet, finding any old ones that do
underneath all the others requires re-reading them and possibly even
checking if some later ones aren't related.

Parts of that could be avoided if there was a way to mark a thread or a
message as resolved | waiting for an answer (from maintainers) | waiting
for a follow-up (from the OP) | etc. Items that nobody has volunteered
to be working on should imo be either turned into a todo if they are
desired or clearly comunicated as wontfix otherwise. Then, all the
resolved messages could be moved out of sight, while making any active
or blocked ones much easier to spot and handle.


That was a long tangent, so let's go back to the main topic.

On Fri Jul 28, 2023 at 00:52 AM CEST, Piotr Masłowski wrote:
> On Thu Jun 1, 2023 at 12:52 PM CEST, Drew DeVault wrote:

>>
>> On Sat May 20, 2023 at 7:29 AM CEST, Piotr Masłowski wrote:
>>> The "Licensing non-software assets" page could include a section on
>>> OpenStreetMap-like initiatives. The license there is ODbL – copyleft,
>>> suited for databases and compilations of data.
>>> <https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/>
>>>
>>> The same page – in the "Hardware" section – could also link to the Open
>>> Source Hardware Association website. It has some high quality guides,
>>> explanations and similar resources.
>>> <https://www.oshwa.org/definition/>

> This is done by patches 1 and 3 respectively. These descriptions could
> probably be somehow improved – especially the one about OSHWA.

I'm still not fully satisfied by these patches. However that's a rather
non-actionable thing – unless someone else has an idea how to expand
these sections.

> I also wasn't sure where to put links, where should they point and what
> the 'non-free' mark exactly entails.

Could we get some guidelines on what 'non-free' precisely means for URLs?

>> Eh, I'd say that attractiveness to commercial use is the defining trait
>> of open source, in fact it was part of the original mandate of the
>> movement
>
> Hmm, I'm not sure OSS people would agree with this description, but I
> guess how it's worded right now can stay.

I still would like to replace that "attractiveness to commercial use"
with an explanation of why it would be attractive to businesses.

> Still, the way copyleft disadvanteges (for commercial players) were
> described didn't sit right with me, so I re-wrote it in the 5th patch.

On Mon Aug 7, 2023 at 12:15 PM CEST, Drew DeVault wrote:
> Too vague. I'm more in favor of the previous wording.

Well, "Less attractive to businesses" is vague too. Businesses may avoid
copyleft software for a few different reasons. Like avoiding extra legal
responsibilities, relying on intellectual property for their operations
(selling licenses, open core, …), unreasonable (or not) policies against
AGPL or GPLv3 in general and probably a few other.
I wanted to cover most of that with "Some people are wary of it" and the
IP-related aspects with "Conflicts with certain business models". The
way it's in my latest patch – "May be less attractive to businesses" –
doesn't bother me that much for some reason. Maybe because it leaves
room for implied nuance.

>>> Maybe mentioning SPDX license identifiers would be a good idea?
>>
>> Yeah, not sure where but feel free to look for a place. We mention REUSE
>> a lot, maybe we could combine it with SPDX to make a page about handling
>> complex scenarios and integrating free software into a broader ecosystem
>
> The best location would be some 'Appplying a license' section or page.
> 'Choosing a license' is already pretty long so creating an entirely new
> page after that would probably the better option.
> That's a significantly bigger endeavor so I'm leaving that for later.

.

>>> Some aspects of styling don't really work that well on narrow (phone)
>>> screens. More precisely, some buttons and other boxes end up slightly
>>> off-center, left-justified text is quite noticeably ragged, the right
>>> margin often ends up very thin and the source code + copyright footer
>>> gets wrapped in a kinda unreadable way.
>>>
>>> (also, something about the button colors, font size and layout of the
>>> front page made it seem to me like Firefox network error at first)

>> Patches for the underlying theme would be much appreciated, they're
>> beyond the scope of what I can deal with right now
>
> I don't have much experience with CSS (and web stuff in general).

Again, this is quite non-actionable right now. Don't know what to do
with it.


I guess that's it. The bulk of this message doesn't need any response or
action. What I'd like to see answered is the question about non-free
links, as well as the tangent about consistent|exhaustive dealing with
incoming messages and contributions.

I hope this isn't too burdensome.
Cheers,
Piotr Masłowski