"submitter didn't know the difference. Perhaps, because he was focused on delivering quality product and didn't delve that deep into the terminology. This is a wrong attitude towards your allies"
Sheesh, the submitted package is explicitly licensed under the GPL, but apparently that was not good enough for it to count as "free software" because the words "open source" appear in its README.
"Savannah is a software forge for free software" was a poor choice of words. Absence of the "open source" label is not part of the free/libre software definition, but rather it's part of behavior that promotes the free/libre software philosophy, which Savannah also enforces.
Thanks for the link! After reading through the requirements, I see the following, which is probably what led to the package's rejection:
Savannah is a free software hosting site: we host projects such as yours for the sake of the ideals of freedom and community that the free software movement stands for. We offer Savannah hosting to free software packages, as free software packages; therefore, please describe your package clearly as a free software package. Please label it as “free software” rather than as “open source”. [emphasis mine]
So I suppose that it was a clearly stated rule that is indeed violated in the README. Still, a better response than:
Savannah is a software forge for free software. We don't host packages that identify themselves as open source.
Would have been:
Your README identifies the package as "open source" rather than "free software", violating our hosting requirements. Please fix this.
It would only have required slightly more typing, and would have come across as far less hostile.