Of anger and financing. My balance of 2021 part 10

Of anger and financing

The tenth installment of my 2021 balance takes us to the month of September and deal with financing issues. This last topic finally exploded in January of this year. Also a new anger from Linus

what happened in september

Pay or not pay. That is the question

The controversy began when the free software distribution site through Torrents, FOSS TORRENTS ad:

For the same reason that we do not distribute Elementary OS, we will stop distributing Linux Lite.

We do not compete with a 'Pay what you want' model. Their team is working very hard to give you the best distribution possible and they deserve at least a reward for all their efforts.

If we created a torrent for Elementary OS or Linux Lite, people would use it to download and (probably) not donate to those projects. That would really hurt the projects, and even us in the future.

We are here to promote free software projects, not to make money behind your back.

Not all of our readers agree with paying for software. One of them commented:

Another profiteer who wants to get paid, when the work is done by others. Since it is a distro based on Ubuntu, he just does a facelift and he thinks he has the right to charge, just like the elementary os jetas, also based on Ubuntu, I give him a facelift and charge you. I do not see bad that they want to charge for a distro, but not for a distro that the base makes it another one and you only do a facelift. Those of Solus OS for example, could perfectly charge for it, because it is not based on any other, they made it new from scratch and even invented their own desktop, in these cases if I see normal that it is charged for a distro, because it is made from zero and that has a curre that you do not see me. In my opinion, whoever charges for a distro based on Ubuntu, would have to give 80% of the turnover that they take out to canonical, since it is the only one that has the merit that those distros, made by jetas, work.

Linus gets mad at Paragon and GitHub

Linus Torvalds monthly anger had to do this time with the way in which a company that collaborates in the development of the Linux kernel requested that new code be incorporated.

Linux kernel developers use version control software in the cloud called GitHub. This software allows you to track who, when and what makes changes.

In case you are not an official core developer, you can do a fork. This consists of copying the project files to your own repository, and then making your own modifications. Then, via a pull request, you can ask the admin of the original project to incorporate the changes.

And, this is where the problem is.

Paragon Software developed a driver that allows the Windows file system to be used on Linux. Once the modifications required to be part of the Linux kernel have been made, the company sent the pull request. But, he did not comply with the formality that the Finn likes:

In a perfect world, this would be a PGP signature that could trace directly to you through the chain of trust, but I have never required it.

He also complained about GitHub's poor performance when it comes to incorporating external code into the main project.l. For the creator of Linux «Linux kernel mergers must be done properly. According to him: “That means proper confirmation messages that include information about what is being merged and *why* something is being merged. Not content with this, it also requires proper information about authorship and committer etc. All of which, according to Linus GitHub does not provide.

Considering that the GitHub base was a project of Linus himself angry about poor alternatives, it's not surprising that he surprises us with some other innovative product

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Financing of free software «Putting was the goose»
Linus challenges Paragon
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Linus challenges Paragon and criticizes GitHub for mergers

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