Portal talk:Free and open-source software/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Portal peer review.

With a view to identifying areas of weakness for a featured portal candidacy filed in the near future, I've opened a portal peer review thread. Please consider participating. Regards, AGK 13:04, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Free Software by license?

Hello. What about creating a "Free Software by license" category? It is as important as "Free software by programming language". Any opinions? (please tell me if this is the wrong place).--OsamaK 17:41, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't really consider the programming language to be of that much importance -- license is by far the most important thing when it comes to free software. I say go for it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.167.145.223 (talk) 02:07, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Category:Free software projects

What is a "Free software project" as opposed to, for example, a "Free software organization"? Could someone write a definition, either a brief note on the category page or an article? Thanks, 69.106.242.20 (talk) 01:24, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

An organization is a group of people. A free software organization is a group of people who do something related to free software. They or others may start projects related to free software (being a project that produce free software or something else that relates directly to the freedom of software) -- these projects are then free software projects. The Free Software Foundation is an example of a free software organization -- GNU is an example of a free software project. I would call the Defective By Design campaign a free software project too -- this may be stretching the term, though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.167.145.223 (talk) 02:11, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Please fix the image

on

85.77.179.98 (talk) 10:34, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Free vs Open Source

The introduction states, "Open-source is also always free software, though the reverse is not always true," which is incorrect. Accessibility to source code is a necessary condition to be free software (see [1]). Therefore all free software qualifies as open source software. Not all open source software is licensed under terms that allow it to qualify as free software. 69.86.33.221 (talk) 18:31, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Software can meet FSF's criteria and fail OSI's, and software can fail FSF's and meet OSI's. In reality, almost no one writes licences that only meet one set of criteria.

Plus there's the fact that both sets of criteria are interpretable. FSF has shown in the past that "nearly" isn't good enough. OSI kinda follows FSF's judgements (ex: OSI could have declared GPLv3 to be non-open source, if you interpret the drm-cant-block-freedom clause to be discriminatory to a "field of endeavour", but that would just make OSI irrelevant.) That's not a criticism of OSI, it's just a dynamic that makes it even more likely that licences will be accepted by both or neither.

But in the end, software that is one but not the other is in such a minuscule minority that discussing it in an introduction is excessive. Gronky (talk) 05:09, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Distribution verses Operating System

Is it true that ubuntu and fedora are actually distributions not operating systems? DG12 (talk) 19:42, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Linux distributions as far as I know are all operating systems. The term distribution is used mainly to indicate that the Linux kernel on its own is not an operating system (i.e. it is distributed along with other software and is very limited on its own). For a Linux distribution to not be considered an operating system it would have to be lacking many of the other tools that allow users to run applications. | Je mir (talk) 19:30, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

They're both. A "distribution" is just a collection of software. GNU/Linux is an operating system, but Fedora and Ubuntu distribute much more than just GNU/Linux. They distribute LibreOffice, GIMP, gnupg, Apache... there are good arguments for calling these things "part of the operating system", and there are arguments against. And the answer will be different in 2012 and 2032. (In the 1980s, no one would have considered a web browser to be part of an operating system.)

So, when you have GNU/Linux and a load of useful software that works together, you have a distribution. There's an operating system in there too, but there's never a need to say exactly which parts are "operating system" and which parts are "additional packages". Gronky (talk) 05:17, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Android?

Why not include Android? It is free, open source? Heart reaper (talk) 13:00, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Merge from Outline of free software

The article Outline of free software has the look and feel of a portal, and should be merged into this article: Free software portal. Belorn (talk) 16:31, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. The merge would make this portal stonger, and have more editors watching it. The merge should be done with a #REDIRECT [[]], so existing wikilinks work.
I moved, with edits, the above paragraph from Talk:Outline of free software as having the discussion on the Merge To page makes it's easier to find, if the merger goes though. Lentower (talk) 17:46, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

• Conditional agree. I support this merge if the contributors who have made the Outline article also find it a good idea. I.e. if the portal really will gain contributors from the merge, then agree. If it's against the wishes of those contributors, and will frustrate them and drive them away, then it would be counter productive. Gronky (talk) 02:53, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
• Outlines and portals are orthogonal to one another. See WP:OUTLINE:

  Outlines are also different from portals, as portals are a collection of excerpts about the subject in various formats without seeking to provide a comprehensive overview of the subject area. Outlines seek to be comprehensive overviews to give the reader the broadest understanding possible of the subject.

  Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:39, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Strongly oppose. The article Outline of free software is structured as a typical "outline" list and is a part of the larger Outline of knowledge. 121.45.219.156 (talk) 07:20, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Massive deletion of Free Software pages on Wikipedia

Hello, I am developer of one of the "minor" Linux distributions. Maybe some of you have noticed that a huge number of distribution's pages were added into consideration for deletion from wikipedia by several admins. Please come to this discussion page and give your opinion before they succeed in what they are up to, whatever their motif is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Leeenux_Linux Spiralciric (talk) 16:26, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Subjects must meet our notability requirements. This requires being noted and reported on in the media. New software will not meet these requirements right away, it will take several years. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, we report what secondary sources say about a subject. If there are no secondary sources, an proper article cannot be written and if created, will be deleted. Yworo (talk) 18:26, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Portal:Freeware redirects here

Portal:Freeware redirects here, which caused confusion on at least the Dwarf Fortress page, where it was later replaced with a direct link to Portal:Free Software.

Even without that replacement, the redirection suggests that freeware and Free Software are the same thing.

174.7.214.214 (talk) 15:48, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

The edit links

The edit links aren't working. Currently the "box" template is passed the box title and the box content. It doesn't know the name of the subpage. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:31, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

 Fixed --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 12:35, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Laravel

Ok, I know back then in late 2012 it maybe wasn't notable. But NOW it is, don't you all agree? More than 6k "stars", almost 2k forks on github... Laravel 4 is reinventing PHP web app development. A quick search on google shows big and respectable blogs talking about it. Leonelsr (talk) 14:06, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of BlackRay

The article BlackRay has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

I can't find any reliable sources. Project no longer maintained.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. genium ⟨✉⟩ 12:28, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

HTML-Code issues of this page Suggestion Fixing style/layout errors

I've found some strange doubled ";;" inside the inline-style of different "div"s on this page.
May be someone deeper involved should have a look for this ?!

---

Example:

---

<div style="border: 2px solid #53C0A7; background: red; color: white; padding: .4em; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-size: 10pt; margin-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: none; background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(bottom, #05F1AE,#1FAD8C); background-image: -o-linear-gradient(bottom, #05F1AE,#1FAD8C); background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(bottom, #05F1AE,#1FAD8C); background-image: linear-gradient(to top, #05F1AE,#1FAD8C);; -moz-border-radius: 4px 4px 0 0; -webkit-border-radius: 4px 4px 0 0; border-radius: 4px 4px 0 0;;"> <i>Associated Wikimedia</i> </div>

---

Jaybear (talk) 22:16, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

---

• 2nd issue:

The inline-style-option "background: red;" inside this related "div"s causes a red title bar in older browsers, esp. iExplorer 7.
Why not change this to a shade of green, for example a little brighter than the Border-color ?
Jaybear (talk) 22:25, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

---

Icon change

I suggest changing the icon to Image:Free Software Portal Logo.svg, because many portals have the same icon (computer), so it should be changed to already used as a FOSS portal icon, but it's my opinion. --Rezonansowy (talk) 21:51, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

There is a "Free Software Portal", not a "Free Open Source Software Portal", this logo is not relevant to free software, so I suggest using this one like on wp.fr. genium ⟨✉⟩ 15:46, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

You're right, that logo was set up for this article since it is mainly s "free software"(free as in freedom) article and not a "free as in beer" "open source" aka "FOSS",

a new portal was created for the FOSS software that doesn't respect the "free software" criteria. 41.230.232.245 (talk) 18:31, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Mass category changes

Do the mass changes seen at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/41.230.232.245 have consensus?

In particular, see my comments at Talk:Slackware#Source model, where I say:

There are four basic ways a distribution can handle non-FOSS components. They are:

[1] 100% FOSS, no non-FOSS components made available by the distribution.

[2] 100% FOSS, adding non-FOSS is made easy (may require a recompile).

[3] Some non-FOSS, stripping non-FOSS out is made easy (may require a recompile).

[4] Some non-FOSS, no obvious way to create a 100% FOSS version.

Slackware is [3].

Richard Stallman will tell you that only [1] is real FOSS. Pretty much everyone agrees that [4] needs to be described as non-FOSS or perhaps a mixture of FOSS and non-FOSS (but then again, that describes Microsoft Windows; the TPC/IP code in Windows is BSD-based...)

To my way of thinking, the difference between [2] and [3] is trivial, and I think Slackware was wise to decide on [3]. Anyone who cares about FOSS vs. non-FOSS is likely to have no problem getting the list of non-FOSS components at freeslack.net and purging them -- and in fact are unlikely to trust code that someone else compiled -- but the vast majority of users will be fine with the default OS including some non-FOSS components.

From a Wikipedia standpoint, if properly referenced all of this would be a fine addition to our Free and open-source software page , but I really don't see a point in differentiating between [2] and [3] in the individual OS pages. As I said, the difference is trivial. Some OS's (Android and GNU Hurd spring to mind) are notable for being free or not free, but in general this should be addressed on the Free and open-source software page. You will find many sources talking about mixing in non-FOSS software, but those sources are unlikely to point at Slackware as an example.

and

I am not sure why you believe that Slackware has no option to remove non-free components. The link you yourself provided ( http://freeslack.net/ ) clearly says "the purging procedure is relatively straightforward. Simply remove offending packages with removepkg, configure, compile, and install a linux-libre kernel, and finally remove the stock kernel packages (kernel, modules, firmware)." Anyone who cannot do that is unlikely to be happy with Slackware anyway, because that's the standard way of updating Slackware.[2] As the saying goes, Slackware is user-friendly. It's just picky about who its friends are.

I am also not sure why you think that the default install image for Debian containing no non-free software is particularly significant or that Debian makes no suggestions to install non-free software. As the FSF says, [3]

"Debian also provides a repository of nonfree software. According to the project, this software is “not part of the Debian system,” but the repository is hosted on many of the project's main servers, and people can readily learn about these nonfree packages by browsing Debian's online package database. There is also a “contrib” repository; its packages are free, but some of them exist to load separately distributed proprietary programs. This too is not thoroughly separated from the main Debian distribution. Previous releases of Debian included nonfree blobs with Linux, the kernel. With the release of Debian 6.0 (“squeeze”) in February 2011, these blobs have been moved out of the main distribution to separate packages in the nonfree repository. However, the problem partly remains: the installer in some cases recommends these nonfree firmware files for the peripherals on the machine."

So do these category changes have consensus? I think that in the case of Slackware they do not. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:24, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

First of all, to explain, FOSS is different from "free software": FOSS means only "free as in beer and open source", while "free software" means "free as in freedom but can be sold": FOSS is used to define "open source" software. "open source movement" and "free software movement" have different philosophies: "free software" is a matter of freedom (the four essential freedoms), "open source" doesn't care about user's freedom but cares about "openness" instead.

Concerning those changes: it's justified, since there is there's no clear policy which restricts the inclusion of nonfree software, also the used kernel within slackware is not "free software": it is the kernel released by Torvalds (under open-source philosophy) which includes non-free proprietary firmware (and have violated the GPLv2 ) and thus doesn't respect the user's four essential freedoms: at that point, Slackware should be distributed in the future under a guidelines which can be compatible with GNU FSDG and use the Linux-libre kernel instead, to be a "free software distribution", and thus can be considered related to "free software" portal. As for consensus, I don't see any reason why it is needed there. Fsfolks (talk) 15:51, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

References

Double boxes

Resolved

@Rezonansowy: After this revert the portal has two sets of boxes around each subpage. Portal:Free software/box-header and Portal:Free software/box-footer create the square-cornered box with an "edit" link at the top right, while Portal:Free software/box creates the round-cornered box with an "edit" link at the bottom right. I don't mind which style is used, but having both seems wrong. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:19, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

@John of Reading: It's  Fixed now. I also improved a color of title in the box. --Rezonansowy_akaRezy (talk | contribs) 13:03, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Portal redesign

Hi there, I redesigned the entire portal. I think not every portal should have the same color identification, so I placed a little green freshness in design. New design features:

• new color scheme – midgreen+gray+white
• new boxes look&feel – it's rounded now
• new tab navigation – one template to rule them all

Know issues:

• I have a one problem, I want to make a param in Portal:Free software/Header2 to specify the current tab page (1, 2 or 3), however when I include {{/Header2|1}} in the main page, the first tab should highlight, but it doesn't. It seems I don't understand the exact mechanism of MediaWiki's #if method. @John of Reading:, could you help? --Rezonansowy_akaRezy (talk | contribs) 17:24, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

@Rezonansowy: Better now? -- John of Reading (talk) 19:18, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Great, thanks! --Rezonansowy_akaRezy (talk | contribs) 19:28, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Renaming Category

I feel that "free" is ambiguous, so I would prefer "freely licensed" in the category name instead. Taemyr (talk) 23:10, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Free is not ambiguous if you look up the definition. Freely licensed however is very ambiguous -- does that mean that the copyright holder can license his project any way he wish? That you, as a licenseholder, may change your license when you want (and to what you want)? Or does it mean that the software in question is free software? These arguments aside, adding yet another term for the same concept which most people don't get anyway won't do any good -- also it is not the task of Wikipedia to add or change definitions in this manner.

Free can mean a lot of things. Freely lisensed doesn't mean it is all free. Some software also has a free trial. However, free is the easiest to understand. You get the gist. PokestarFan (talk) 00:37, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

software infobox

Resolved

Hi !

Not quite sure which portal or project is maintaning the the infobox and templates for software articles, so i'm asking that question here. At GeoGebra i noticed the peculiar behaviour that the version display is stuck at 5.0.180 and doesn't match anymore the value that was entered via the linked template which is currently at 5.0.187. Does anybody know why that is and how to fix that?--Kmhkmh (talk) 22:33, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

@Kmhkmh: The page looks OK to me. Perhaps it only needed a purge? -- John of Reading (talk) 07:25, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes the problem seems resolved now, I suppose it was a cache problem somewhere along the way. Never ran into something like this before though.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:16, 20 December 2015 (UTC)