Re: getmail and Fedora 32

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 06:26:21AM -0400, Remco Rijnders wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 10:23:02AM +0200, Stefan wrote in
> <[email protected]>:
> > The problem is the way that the fork is handled, that it registers
> > getmail6.org and seems to push itself aggressively on distributions.
> 
> As the person who registered getmail6.org (though not the person doing
> work to make getmail work with Python 3), I'd like to respond to this.
> I disagree with your assertion that getmail6 is aggressively pushing
> itself onto distributions. Do you have any evidence for this?

I don't know if the person who asserts Copyright (c) 2020 is doing this,
but two of the people involved in pitching getmail6 to distributions are
also listed as contributors on GitHub:

https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg1759969.html
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/getmail6/


And then there's this one, which contradicts statements made on this
mailing list:

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=248633

"getmail-5.14 depends on python-2.7, and there is no upstream effort to
 port to python3."



> I learned about this fork on this
> mailing list first, and Charles has been invited to join the project,
> so it can hardly come as a surprise that people are working on
> this. Our fork/port is not a hostile one and I am sorry if anyone
> perceives it as such.

Inviting the original author to a fork is rather tactless.


> getmail6.org was chosen and registered as our domain name as we'd like
> our project to have its own website, I hope you take no exception to
> that?

If a project has been distributed for decades under http://pyropus.ca/
and a fork goes straight for the jackpot URL, I think one is entitled
to speculate about the motivations.


Perhaps the motivations are good, but I don't like forks of projects
that are clearly maintained.  And I certainly don't approve of copying
the documentation verbatim, even if the license allows for that.


Stefan Krah