Bug#476536: grub-pc: allow update-grub to do not generate single-user entry if not desired

[Lubomir Kundrak]

Soo, in will to be helpful:

> On 18/04/2008 at 15:22 +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
> 
> > Please can you send that to grub-devel at gnu.org?  Thanks.
> 
> I tried a couple of minutes ago. Unfortunately that list is subscribers
> only.
> 
> I’m not willing to subscribe to a developers list just to send them a
> bugreport :(
> 
> I believe that those kind of lists should be open if they’re willing to
> receive feedback from users.

Mailing lists certainly don't scale well for patches and many people.
GRUB has a bugtracker on Savannah -- shouldn't that one be used?

Anyways, for small changes, users are not willing to register to a bug
tracker -- in Fedora maintainers usually forward fixes to whatever BTS
or mailing list does upstream use.

> Unfortunately, opening it to non-subscribers results in tons of spam coming to
> the list, which makes it unusable.

Ever heard of moderated lists? (Surely moderation usually takes a lot of
word, so I mostly flush all messages pending moderation for some time.
Exception is when I am notified that a message from non-subscriber is
coming via BTS or IRC. This would be exactly that case.

> The maintainers won't accept patches without paperwork, that's why I need
> patch submitters to deal directly with upstream.

I always thought GPL is kind  of "sticky" when it comes to modification
-- contributor modified the package, thus the work inherits GPL
licensing. Unfortunatelly, not it seems it is not in eyes of GNU project
itself:

http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Papers.html

In practice assuming "stickiness" seems proven to be effective -- most
significant projects involving GPL software Linux, Fedora, Debian will
accept contribution without paperwork.

There will be surely more contributions coming from people who would not
be willing to sign papers, so unless I have overlooked something either
GRUB upstream would have to reconsider the way they accept patches or it
might be come inevitable that operating system distributors will have to
maintain their own patch set over GRUB code base (situation might be
better if we could coordinate better than in GRUB Legacy case in case
this happens).

For now, I'm going to import the patch into package proposed to Fedora
and am wishing the GRUB upstream good luck in becoming a good Free
Software Community citizen :)

Thanks,
-- 
Lubomir Kundrak (Red Hat Security Response Team)