[blag-whereto] shutdown/removal of blag vm

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Sep 22, 2013, tristan <pinmaritim at riseup.net> wrote:

> i don't understand;you seem to have no support from the FSF & Gnu-org.
> Why?

Why do you say that?

We got all the support we asked for from the FSF and GNU.

The only one uncomfortable with the current arrangement is myself,
because as far as the FSF is concerned, I'm the contact point WRT that
server, which makes me feel personally responsible for any harm that the
FSF and the other projects hosted by it might suffer should our AFAICT
insecure server be broken into.

That, plus my perception that there's no maintenance work underway in
the blag community, therefore no perspective that existing holes will be
fixed with security updates or new releases, plus the feedback I got on
our IRC channel that blag was effectively dead, made me discuss with the
FSF what path to take, for there'd be no point in the FSF's lending
computing resources and taking risks if nothing good for the free
software movement is ever going to come out of it.

Now, since there is clearly a community that cares about blag carrying
on, I can hope out of this community something good for the movement
*will* come out, and I'll be very glad to help make it happen.

> what can we do ?as average users with no technical knowledge;
> is it a question of finance?
> or of mainteneers&developpers?servers?

My feeling is that we need maintainers/developers; it seemed to me like
BLAG was hopelessly abandoned by all former developers, and RMS even
told me last time he tried to get more maint/developers for blag,
nothing came out of it.  Under that light, shutting down would seem
reasonable, does it not? ;-)

Anyway, I'm sure we need more maintainers and developers, and if we
can't get that with community action (say, sufficiently caring user
becoming maintainers or enlisting other volunteers to do so ;-), maybe
trying to crowdfund a paid position is something we could consider, if
we can find someone who would like to do the job but couldn't do it well
without such financial support.

> if Blag dissapears i would be very unhappy with the Gnu-org
> & the Fsf,considering that they have not defended such a great project.

I'm sorry that you felt that way; I hope you now agree that it was a
misperception.  I don't see a wish in GNU or in the FSF that BLAG will
go away (quite the opposite), but ultimately it is our collective
responsibility to keep it alive.  Let's make it so!

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist      Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer