Why did you kill Feodor's Mypal and Centaury?

For discussions about side projects, potential future projects or helper applications for Pale Moon.
User avatar
palacs
Hobby Astronomer
Hobby Astronomer
Posts: 15
Joined: 2018-09-18, 20:30

Why did you kill Feodor's Mypal and Centaury?

Unread post by palacs » 2021-10-01, 08:03

Dear Moonchild,

Years ago you dropped support for Windows XP and opposite to several requests, you refused to bring it back. Okay you didn't want to support XP because you were afraid that tech-media would put your reputation down for that. Quite selfish but understandable and it's your decision. At first you and other devs also seemed to help those who wanted to fork Pale Moon which was very kind from you (and I mean it). But now you have turned very aggressive and would seek to kill one of the best forks, Mypal.

https://github.com/Feodor2/Centaury/issues/39
https://github.com/Feodor2/Centaury/issues/41

What Feodor did were not intentonal violations but innocent mistakes. Still you forced him to stop development without allowing correction.

Honestly, Moonchild, what (financial, reputational or anything other kind of) damage did Feodor cause to you by making his mistakes?

Why does it hurt you so much if someone creates a successful project for users demanding a browser for an operating system you have intentionally refused to support?

Shouldn't FOSS be about sharing knowledge, helping each other? Why did you put your efforts into making it impossible for Feodor to continue development instead of helping him comply with your license terms?

User avatar
Moonchild
Pale Moon guru
Pale Moon guru
Posts: 35402
Joined: 2011-08-28, 17:27
Location: Motala, SE
Contact:

Re: Why did you kill Feodor's Mypal and Centaury?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2021-10-01, 08:57

Not sure why you made a public post about this when it's directed personally at me by name, but sure, whatever, continue the "show trial" antics, why don't you.

First off, you clearly seem to happily believe the constructed narrative from Feodor and his cronies. Not sure I can blame you for that since a lot of effort has been made to exclude us from participation in various locations where this narrative is put forth (like Reddit, where various community members have been banned from the subreddit for no real reason at all).
I didn't "kill" Mypal or Centaury. As I've already said in multiple places (but likely been downvoted into oblivion or removed from public view otherwise) I have no issue with forks existing for Windows XP, and I sure as hell won't go out of my way to hunt down and kill any such forks.

Side note: I do think it's a very bad idea, since Windows XP machines shouldn't be internet-connected any more for obvious security reasons, but that's completely unrelated here.
palacs wrote:
2021-10-01, 08:03
Okay you didn't want to support XP because you were afraid that tech-media would put your reputation down for that.
Totally incorrect. Dropping XP support had nothing to do with tech media or the project's reputation in media's eyes. In fact, that lack of concern for public reputation in media outlets was already present way before then when first we were painted black by MozillaZine, and later we were banned from being written about by one of the largest media conglomerates because I didn't agree with malware being bundled in the installer or having people run a stub installer with the same effect. So any implied "fear" I might have is a totally ridiculous notion in that context.
Operating system support is first and foremost a technical consideration, secondly it's a consideration for total amount of maintenance cost (in terms of effort and time).
palacs wrote:
2021-10-01, 08:03
What Feodor did were not intentonal violations but innocent mistakes.
None of us here believe that, because Feodor, when pointed to his violation of the MPL in 2019, clearly indicated he understood the issue and would correct it, and even at that time promised to fix up Centaury as well. 2 years later we found that he was still not complying with the license and not providing source code forms of the browser binaries he was (and apparently still is?) publishing. Second violation for the very same thing.

This isn't about financial or material damages either. All we've ever wanted is for people to comply with the Open Source licensing they chose to work under.
Keep in mind though the damage to FOSS as a whole is considerable if people just start flaunting software and code licensing left and right. The Free Software Foundation holds exactly the same opinion as I do here, and have pressured multiple developers into being compliant where necessary.
palacs wrote:
2021-10-01, 08:03
Shouldn't FOSS be about sharing knowledge, helping each other?
And not providing the source code is not sharing knowledge. Have you thought about that too?
There's no requirement for one project to help any other. And as a matter of fact, Mypal has never helped us in any way either. That's fine though. There are plenty of projects surrounding the same code that each do their own thing -- not what FOSS was intended to be and it's sad to see the lack of cooperation in many places. But so it goes. It's where philosophy behind something and people's practical implementation of an idea differ.
palacs wrote:
2021-10-01, 08:03
Why did you put your efforts into making it impossible for Feodor to continue development instead of helping him comply with your license terms?
It's Feodor's own responsibility to be compliant. We did help him in 2019 to become compliant again and even with this clash offers were made to help him out but they were shot down immediately by people proclaiming they were "a trap" or what not, even if it's not our task to help anyone else be responsible developers.
The only person responsible for it being impossible to continue development on our code is Feodor himself. The only active involvement from our side was notifications of non-compliance and Tobin terminating his grant for repeat violations of the license. He only has himself to blame for what happened. He broke the rules, so now he is no longer allowed to play. It's literally as simple as that. :)

Being allowed to use source code written by others is a privilege, not a right. The written code remains the intellectual property of the original author and under Open Source licensing its use is merely licensed to you under certain conditions. If you don't stick to those conditions, then you lose the privilege. Maybe you should read through this document if you don't understand ownership and the MPL's rights and obligations.

Bottom line: if you fork something under a certain license, you must put every reasonable effort into complying with that license. If you don't, then there are consequences.

And that is everything I have to say about this. Topic closed.
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

Locked