I wanted to start a discussion about software licencing used for the Encyclosphere project. I think the whole project should run on Free software. If somebody finds some non-Free code used, it should be flagged as a bug and an alternative sought. I shall provide two examples below of what I have in mind: Slack At the moment, Encyclosphere is using Slack as a platform for discussion. Though this is a widely used platform, it is proprietary. There are strong, Free alternatives, and we should consider using these instead. Here are a few suggestions which might be worthwhile: [matrix] https://matrix.org/ (Very popular on IRC) Aether https://getaether.net (Distributed, ephemeral) RocketChat https://rocket.chat/ This blog site uses Gravatar, which I believe is also proprietary. An alternative could be: https://www.libravatar.org/
In order to facilitate oversight and scrutiny, it might be worthwhile establishing a live table which categorizes and lists the software used in various parts of the Encyclosphere project, alongside their purpose, licence and when and whether this information was verified.
I would agree with you, but do note that all the infrastructure here has been set up by one or two people, and they’re doing the best they can. Moving the chat from Slack to a free platform is desirable but it’s not the highest priority.