On Fri, 2009-05-08 at 17:25 -0400, Luis Villa wrote: > I guess a fairly obvious question I should have asked earlier: what > things are there that you want to access via gdata that aren't > systematically available via other protocols (rss, pop, imap, http, > etc.)? That might help clarify a bit what kinds of risks are being run > here. (As I point out later, I use google stuff, like everyone, but > I've never once thought 'man, I wish I could access this via gdata > instead of pop/imap/web browser'.) The main thing is that GData allows you to modify entries on a server, as well as just list them. It exposes all of the data on the Google services which support it (not all support it yet, but it's heading that way) for programmatic access. There isn't really any other way to access most of the data except via your web browser. (Or RSS with Google Calendar and Reader; but those are read-only feeds.) You may never have thought specifically about accessing stuff via GData, but you might well have wanted to list your Google Contacts in Evolution, or mark an RSS feed item as read from Liferea. That can only be done via GData. > Windows is in wide use; is practically free to the vast majority of > computer users; and their APIs are very well documented. Lets just use > that! ;) > > I'm only slightly exagerrating; obviously cross-platform gtk, gimp, > etc. are all very good and healthy for us. So we shouldn't ignore > these factors. But the difference is that if you use gimp on windows, > you're one step closer to using a free operating system. That doesn't > appear to be the case here. (If I use IMAP to access gmail, OTOH, I'm > fine, freedom-wise.) I take your point about Windows, but your point about using IMAP to access GMail isn't really valid; GData is pretty much an open protocol (valid Atom, and has a patent release[1], but you're the lawyer here) – just like IMAP – and our problem is with the non-libre-ness of the server software. If you access GMail via IMAP, the GMail server software isn't any more libre just because you're using IMAP. (Unless my assumption that they're using an in-house piece of software is false.) > Nor have I. :) I'd suggest that this would be the best approach, from > a freedom perspective, but obviously technically it might not be > feasible at this time. > > I'm not saying there is any clear right or wrong answer overall, but I > really think both you and GNOME should think hard about what behaviors > we're encouraging by endorsing gdata. Hopefully asking these questions > is a useful part of that process :) Again, I'm not sure it's really my place to say. You have, however, persuaded me to re-evaluate libgdata from a more harshly pro-libre-software viewpoint, and I would completely understand if the community would prefer libgdata to be an external dependency, rather than a blessed member of the desktop set. Regards, Philip [1]: http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/patent-license.html
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