Bzr development stopped

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ben Finney writes:
 > "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:

 > > Ben Finney writes:
 > >
 > >  > One of the biggest points holding back development is the barrier
 > >  > of a one-sided contribution agreement.
 > >
 > > I really don't believe that. It would be easy enough to prove though:
 > > Fork! If it's really a big barrier to development, you'll get a huge
 > > round of applause and a deluge of code contributions.
 > 
 > Not an effective test. The pool of potential contributors to Bazaar is
 > now small enough that splitting the pool would not likely succeed, even
 > if I'm right.

Look, I admit I personally won't join such a fork.  I have no itches
to scratch here.  But it *will* work in the sense of attracting new
blood to the Bazaar "family", without doing real harm to the parent.

As an XEmacs maintainer, I'm in a position to assure you that (1) a
fork for this reason won't split the pool (my experience is that
people currently contributing have already signed the "papers", and
none will defect to the fork simply because they can now avoid the
legal procedure that they've already agreed to in the past[1]), and
(2) since the fork is only bringing in new contributors and is
friendly in the sense that it will probably sync almost everything
that the Bazaar project produces, "small pool" is not a problem.

That said, I still don't believe the fork will end up light-years
ahead of the Canonical project.

 > I have no quarrel with primary contributors being paid.

I don't think I implied you did.  I think we all agree that's nice
work if you can get it.  I just wonder why it's so hard to find
employers like that.<wink/>

 > That can be done just as well with all contributions being under
 > the GPL for *all* parties, including Canonical.

Canonical evidently doesn't think they'd do as well without their
contributor agreement, and they're the ones doing the paying.  If you
want them to change, you'll have to convince them yourself.  The
existing contributors clearly don't care as much as you do, probably
because nobody has articulated reasons that would make them care.  How
much less are the legal staff and executives going to be convinced by
the lack of plausible arguments? :-)

Footnotes: 
[1]  True, there's a tiny chance that some *new* contributors will
choose the low-hassle option, but in my experience that's always more
than offset by the desire to contribute to the "real" project.  There
has to be a non-legal reason for people -- who *would* sign the
"papers" if it were the only option -- to join the fork.  Most
"papers" refuseniks are like you: they just won't sign, period.