Accusations of AGPL violations by Sourcehut belong elsewhere (was Re: Remove Sourcehut from recommendations)

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

hf, I'm replying here to close out this thread, but this list isn't the right
place to make allegations of AGPLv3 violations (even if they were
substantiated, which yours aren't).

SFC has a contact address for that at <compliance at sfconservancy.org>.  Please
do review the The Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement:
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.html

These Principles, which were also endorsed by the FSF, do encourage avoiding
going public with accusations of violations *at least* until they are
confirmed with a Complete, Corresponding Source (CCS) check.

hf wrote:
> Sourcehut claims to be FOSS, but it factually isn't, since there is no way
> to even build it yourself.

Recommendations that it is easier to use prebuilt binaries than to attempt to
bootstrap is not, nor has it ever been, a violation of copyleft licenses.  If
that were a violation of copyleft in itself, then the entirety of Debian
would be in constant violation of copyleft, since the Debian project pushes
users to use the prebuilt binaries rather than bootstrap.

If your allegation is true that it is impossible to build those packages from
sources and then reinstall the freshly built packages, that would indeed be
an AGPLv3 violation.  However, your email does not include results of a CCS
check.  Once you've attempted to build and install and been unable to do so,
definitely raise the issue directly with the project maintainers, and if they
seem unwilling to address the issues, please report it as an AGPL violation
via the usual ways (which are not this list).

> Especially when we have actually free software like gitea and gitlab doing
> a better job and actually encouraging to self-host.

These are both already listed on https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/

> I heard the SFC is funding them as well

It's very difficult to take your email seriously when you include false
accusations based on unsubstantiated rumors.  I hadn't heard this rumor
before, but I can dispel it: writing as the Treasurer of SFC, I can confirm
that SFC is not, to my knowledge, funding SourceHut.  You can also fact-check
SFC's grant-making by reviewing our Form 990s at
https://sfconservancy.org/about/transparency/.

> and that people within the SFC like Jason Self

Jason Self is a colleague of ours, and he does donate to SFC each year, but
he has not, and has never been, "within the SFC".

I also have no knowledge what Jason's opinions are about Sourcehut and/or
statements by its maintainers.

> This is highly questionable.

… not as questionable as your email itself is.  Your email seems to be a
politically motivated email — more focused on your personal opinions about
SourceHut's maintainers and mostly unrelated to the software itself.  Whether
or not SourceHut is a viable FOSS alternative to GitHub is the issue that
we're concerned about here on this list.  Please take your complaints about
unrelated individuals elsewhere, and please take AGPL violation complaints to
the appropriate fora, but only *after* doing extensive CCS checking (as SFC
and FSF do).
--
Bradley M. Kuhn - he/them
Treasuer at Software Freedom Conservancy
========================================================================
Become a Conservancy Sustainer today: https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer