Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Recognizing the GNU system as a free distro

[Jason Self]

Ludovic Courtès said:
> I'm reluctant because of the technical and administrative burden it
> entails

I suppose another option is to leave out problematic packages
entirely. Otherwise, welcome to the world of being an FSF-endorsed
distro. :)

> Besides, our package meta-data would probably still refer to the
> "real" home page of the package, from which it's trivial to get the
> unmodified tarball.

I think the question isn't whether or not the users of a distro can
leave their distro's infrastructure and install non-free or other
programs on their own. Rather, it seems more a question of if the
programs that the users finds through the distro are themselves
FSDG-compliant [0]. I agree with what Sam said regarding Parabola back
in 2011 [1] that:

> Consider that the software is really the source code and that the
> binaries are just the usable machine-readable form of it. Both
> source code and binaries should be free (the latter follows from the
> former if all is well).

...

> providing non-free software + user executable freedom patch is not
> what a free distro should be doing, IMO.

Ludovic Courtès said:

> we'd need an out-of-band mechanism to maintain patches/scripts, said
> patches/scripts would have to be reviewed separately, contributors
> would need to have the necessary credentials to upload patched
> tarballs, etc.

I think some of this can be automated and minimized. Trisquel, for
example, uses what they call Helpers [2]. As new versions are pulled
in from Ubuntu the corresponding package helper is run, if one exists
for that package. That helper is responsible for making any changes
that are needed to the source code and repackaging it before it is
moved into the Trisquel repositories to be compiled. In this way the
users of the distro always have access to FSDG-compliant source code
packages.

Is there some automated method in which Guix checks for new versions
from upstream? Perhaps this could be extended such that, for certain
programs, they're run through some script to clean them up in a
similiar automated fashion to Trisquel? The gnupload script [3] could
then be used to upload them to, say, the GNU FTP server? (Perhaps in
the non-gnu area?) In this way the process that checks for new
versions handles the actual work. People contributing to Guix only
need access to the version control system to maintain the "helper" for
that program.

[0] http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
[1]
http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2011-01/msg00045.html
[2] https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/package-helpers\
[3] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnulib.git/tree/build-aux/gnupload