The question Do open source movies exist? made me curious about Open Source movies. It seems like most Open Source movies are animated, which makes sense since you can make all content yourself and assure it's licensed appropriately and making additional content is feasible for other people.
Sup...
I've been involved with matheducators.stackexchange.com and a little bit with expatriates.stackexchange.com. I've noticed that both had very high activity during private beta and then about half as much activity during public beta (which makes sense, because people are trying to get the site goin...
As I said at another time, most questions I can ask here, I can also answer, so I did knew open source movies exists, but I saw that we had nothing about moview so far, thats why I asked
@Gilles: Question drives traffic (good questions yes) - but seemingly all my question yesterday found positive reactions
The thing I wanted to ask about, was the MIT AI lab and the Emacs-story, both that did drive Stallman towards creation the Free Software Movement
I'd like to suggest a different approach than what I've seen on most sites: rather than having a list of topics I think it would be wise to first define the core topic of this site is about. I think it's important to state that except in the rarest of questions "open source", "free" and "libre" a...
My draft for the on-topic page. It's quite different from Ziz's, but I think it will help to be upfront about our site's neutrality.
@overactor Thanks :) And nitpicking is what this process is for! We can always change that page later, but we'll want to get it as good as possible the first time
@overactor by "collaboration" I'm thinking of the questions we've seen about pull requests, how to encourage new collaborators, how to deal with people whose collaborations are not actually helpful, how to deal with people posting bug reports in the wrong places etc
Am I wrong or are there virtually no questions about the marketing and the organization aspect? Most questions are either FAQs or heavily constructed to test the boundaries of common licenses. — Eric Gärtner7 mins ago
@overactor Ah, well that may be a true generalisation (though there are probably more than he realises) but it doesn't explain why it shouldn't be mentioned in the on-topic list. Especially as most of us want more variety of questions!
The tag linux-distribution shall be renamed to gnu-linux-distribution.
Reasons: Virtually all distributions running the Linux kernel run a lot of software developed under the GNU project.
See also the extensive FAQ from the FSF about this topic.
I noticed the question How to license program output? which is a verbatim copy of an entry of the GNU GPL FAQ. Naturally, the current top answer also quotes said entry of the FAQ.
Should we get content for this website by simply mirroring content from official FAQs?
Are we even allowed to do t...
Most questions about licensing that have a relation to the GNU licenses are already answered in the extensive Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses. But almost none of the answers to such questions refer to this FAQ or just add a comment to the question saying that it is a FAQ and not...
(Follow up to Should we copy questions from the GNU GPL FAQ):
I noticed the answers copy verbatim of entries of the GNU GPL FAQ.
Should we get content for this website by simply mirroring content from official FAQs?
Are we even allowed to do this copyright-wise? The page the quote comes from ...
@EricGärtner It seems like you have some pre-existing beef with SE. I can respect that, not everyone has to like every website there is. But I'd suggest you let those who like the SE process continue doing so without tearing them down. To your credit I'm not seeing you do that anywhere on the main site, just here on Meta, but still, Meta should be a place of constructive criticism. — curiousdannii34 secs ago
An attempt at a placating comment... I don't know how well it will be received
Meta is a place for discussion. The main site is not about Free Software or Open Source. It does not have the problem this site haves: How can a community that claims to honour values like Freedom use a proprietary platform that is destroying communities elsewhere by drawing all attention? — Eric Gärtner4 mins ago
Is there some way that I can license the output people get from use of my program under the GNU GPL? For example, if my program is used to develop hardware designs, can I require that these designs must be free? -> Is there some way that I can GPL the output people get from use of my program? For example, if my program is used to develop hardware designs, can I require that these designs must be free?
@overactor I just read this new question, thought it was by the same guy, and then got confused when I couldn't find an identical question in the FSF FAQ haha!
@ArtOfCode You saying that our purpose is getting traffic has given him something to support his arguments with :P
@curiousdannii I am not forcing to call/stick with GNU/Linux BUT as the title of question ask "Why do some people refer to Linux as GNU/Linux?" I gave an example only
The user you are talking about joined 2 days ago and also joined Stack Overflow 2 days ago. Despite the impression that they are against Stack Exchange, they've posted 6 answers to Stack Overflow.
Note: "We in the free software movement don't think of the open source camp as an enemy; the enemy is proprietary (nonfree) software. But we want people to know we stand for freedom, so we do not accept being mislabeled as open source supporters." - by rms
Good news everyone, it was discussed on the Stack Exchange podcast, and we now have a site design. This should be rolling out as soon as we can get the design spec converted into workable CSS.
Completed layout:
If you have any comments before this is finalized, please let me know.
Design con...
User TylerDurden brought up that link-only answers were discouraged in a discussion about this answer being a quote from wikipedia.
I'm of the opinion that answers should include at least a tl;dr or paraphrase of the quoted content, rather than just copying wholesale out of, say, Wikipedia — but...
@curiousdannii It appears that this is also deliberate to make a point. I don't like that way of making a point, but it is a fair point which we've already made ourselves. Hopefully we can get past the confrontation and find a way to get better questions
He will either turn out to be a problem that needs to be removed, or a rough start to a useful contributor. Until we find out which, let's try asking what he suggests
Most questions about licensing that have a relation to the GNU licenses are already answered in the extensive Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses. But almost none of the answers to such questions refer to this FAQ or just add a comment to the question saying that it is a FAQ and not...
@EricGärtner That's besides the point. No one cares about licensing and attribution here, we care of general mutual respect for others and we need integrity here. — Zizouz21244 secs ago
@curiousdannii Do think about it. Everyone does lose their cool at times, and I'm sure you can refrain from doing so here. If you can, I think you would make a good mod.
Following the discussion about Eric Gärtner, I get the impression that the confrontation escalated due to frustration on both sides, and I've seen much the same happen between existing members of the community in the past, which gets resolved ones things quieten down and discussion can continue.
I had a chat to him in the comments, and he seems very reasonable.
It's worth discussing because it's controversial. You can sum up the topic in a sentence but there's so much subtlety to it. I'm really glad we made it to public beta
Although the approach to making the point caused conflict, I do agree that we need more good substantial questions. I'm thinking I should pick an open source project to start contributing to so I can stumble across some subject matter for good questions
In a way I'm glad there's been conflict. It's not pleasant at the time, but I think it's healthy for a community to have the memory of there having been conflict that didn't stop people getting along afterwards. It's encouraging.
Applying my question on the main site to this site itself:
Can this site, which is trying to be a community for Free Software (besides other topics), run on a proprietary platform (SE)?
Which part of the Free Software community can and will find this acceptable?
He clearly feels strongly, but I recommended asking more questions on meta rather than the ironic main posts, and he's taken that on board. Disagreeing with a meta post doesn't make it a bad meta post - I'd like to see answers discussing this.
I agree with some of his points and disagree with others, but I think even the ones I disagree with belong on meta so future visitors with the same opinion can see at a glance how the community feels.
Absolutely, I'm not going anywhere near deleting them. Metas.SE/SO have some heavily downvoted posts that are still very useful to them, and the posts here feel like that kind of thing.
We're not being as welcoming as we could be because of our conflict of interest - we don't want to see our fledgling site fail, but yes I think these posts are part of building our site.
The only thing to be wary of is starting a political/holy war
Which these quesitons, taken as a body of work, are beginning to feel like
If you consider that the major difference between FSF and OSI is idealogical, that type of schism attracts people 'looking for a cause" .. and they take every opportunity to get on a soapbox.
Yep. Well when we get our mods, I'm going to ask that they pay especially close attention to that. We can't and shouldn't tolerate such arguments here. Constructive, friendly debate is OK, but argument has no place here. Since we've got a bit of a hot topic, our mods are going to need to watch out for this happening.
Aye, post on meta. I don't know if mods can add custom reasons...
If the consensus is yes, then flag it for mod attention. If we've got our own mods by then, they can get in contact with SE and ask for it; if not, SE'll pick up the flag.
We are currently running with a default set of reasons to VTC a question, or for flagging.
Should we also have some custom reasons? If so what might be suitable?
We are currently running with a default set of reasons to VTC a question, or for flagging.
Should we also have some custom reasons? If so what might be suitable?