tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)

Marcus Bauer marcus.bauer at gmail.com
Mon Apr 12 19:13:20 CEST 2010


On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:02:05 -0400
Stephen Pape <srpape at gmail.com> wrote:

> "Aces" in your sleeve? You mean you're keeping the development process
> intentionally closed to discourage forkers? What?

I happily explain it again to you: forks are potentially damaging to any
project. Here and actually only here on openmoko there have been some
people actually massively aggressing me and threatening me on any
occasion with a fork. So yes, you got that right :)

I do not always have time to work on tangoGPS and still can do a
constant flow of new features. You are a funny man - big scandale that
not all my brain activity is monitorable :) I know that RMS would like
to enclose all software developers in a gulag with constant thought
monitoring - yeah! Any software thought must be freed at once :)

Just to mention it: the linux kernel had been developed for the first
years purely based on tarballs and patches without any public
distributed VCS and collaboration has worked without problems. Simply
because in 1992 pretty much nobody had a 24/7 permanent online internet
access.

It is not as if 80% of the code changes in a week. And it is not as if
there would be legions of willing developers. Actually any open source
project that I know is short of good developers and much more software
doesn't even get developed because people lack skill, focus, energy and
long term commitment.

Last not least I am replying here because the thread was opened here
and because many people have bought Freerunners to run tangoGPS on them.

A last word: the vast majority of the members of the Openmoko community
are here for the opportunities that open hardware and open software
offer. Hwoever a small fraction has a misunderstanding about free
software. I have seriously received bizarre emails of people telling me
what I have to do because I am a free software developer and as they
don't know how to write software I have to do it for them.

Best regards,
Marcus - creator of successful free software :-)








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