We absolutely must consider the non-technical aspects of a change, and it behooves us to consider them before other aspects.
Changes are often driven by new requirements. If we approve the change, we are approving the adoption of those requirements.
There isn't always a technical reason for such an adoption other than "someone wants it that way".
Based on this article, I mustn't reject, for instance, GPL-ed code being added to a BSD-licensed program. There is no technical argument against it. We can just switch everything to the GPL license and march forward; what's the problem? Can we put religion aside and just discuss the code?
There also no technical reason why a compiler shouldn't have a --tetris option for playing a little game on the text console. No wait, I didn't say anything about text; we can just link in SDL and have it graphical! Anyway, can we just discuss the best way to do this, and not emotional debates about whether or not to do it?
So, "someone wants it that way"? Whooptee doo, so effin' what? Let them fork the code.
We absolutely must consider the non-technical aspects of a change, and it behooves us to consider them before other aspects.
Changes are often driven by new requirements. If we approve the change, we are approving the adoption of those requirements.
There isn't always a technical reason for such an adoption other than "someone wants it that way".
Based on this article, I mustn't reject, for instance, GPL-ed code being added to a BSD-licensed program. There is no technical argument against it. We can just switch everything to the GPL license and march forward; what's the problem? Can we put religion aside and just discuss the code?
There also no technical reason why a compiler shouldn't have a --tetris option for playing a little game on the text console. No wait, I didn't say anything about text; we can just link in SDL and have it graphical! Anyway, can we just discuss the best way to do this, and not emotional debates about whether or not to do it?
So, "someone wants it that way"? Whooptee doo, so effin' what? Let them fork the code.