What's Canonical thinking about Bazaar?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Martin Pool writes:

 > I don't think the fact that the authors of the free software are
 > paid by the same people as the owners of the non-released service
 > makes the free software less free.

That's true, but it's a legalistic thing, and Richard Stallman would
very likely take exception to any claim that Canonical is a "member in
good standing" of the free software movement as long as it uses, even
in part, a business model that depends on proprietary restrictions.

That's why I avoid the term "free software" in connection with myself.
I call myself an open source software advocate and a libertarian
(though not in a class with Eric Raymond or Russ Nelson), not a free
software advocate.

 > No, I think the thread has just been confused, not the people.
 > Launchpad was not released from day one because we wanted a single
 > "canonical" database,

This is not so different from what Richard Stallman does, except that
he uses jawbone rather than an unreleased product to inhibit
competition.  Richard quite clearly thinks that competition is a bad
thing.

 > (Interesting question whether it would have been better to build in
 > federation from the start, but definitely off topic.)

<snort />  Given the announcement that kicked this thread off, and
traffic about just how many branches need to be associated with each
Unbuntu package, I bet it won't be off topic for long!<wink>