Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Parabola GNU/Linux

[Sam Geeraerts]

Jason Self wrote:
> Joshua Ismael wrote:
>
> > Archlinux has an automatic building system in wich you
> > provide some information and the script automatically
> > build them.
> >
> > For Parabola GNU/Linux we provide scripts for deblobing
> > while building so anyone can compile it's linux-libre kernel
> > from the vanilla source.
> >
> > If the purpose is to provide the means to build a free
> > kernel we already make this. Isn't this enough?

A free distro should consist of only free software. 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).

> My understanding is that the existing free distros provide
> already-deblobbed kernel source code for their users to get, instead of
> having them download the original unmodified tarball from kernel.org.

The kernel in gNewSense DeltaH is deblobbed, for MetaD we grab the 
source and binary packages straight from fsfla.org.

> My own personal opinion is that grabbing the corresponding linux-libre
> tarballs and then fixing any distro-specific patches that don't cleanly
> apply is a better choice.
>
> It's a good question, though: Can a free distro have their users
> download nonfree software and then go through the process to clean it up
> later?

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

I'll admit these two points about gNewSense:

1) We make OpenOffice.org link to the FSF extension list with a 
dpkg-divert in a separate package. This means that the link is only 
changed when that package is installed (which is the case in a standard 
desktop install). I think that's acceptable.

2) Sometimes we leave freedom issues in the repo while working on a fix. 
In the case of the boost lib in OO.o [1] it took me a few months to fix 
it. Perhaps we should be more strict about this and remove the package 
immediately, but only reintroduce after the fix is complete.

[1] https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?29882