Re: [GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[bill-auger]

my first though this morning was to claim a highly coveted GNU-Buck by
reporting the purio.sm non-free repos as this does appear to be exactly
the same thing that makes debian nonFSDG; but after some thought, i
realizedthere is a distinction in that debian exists solely for the
purpose of producing debian and the debian non-free repos exists solely
for the purpose of enhancing debian - the purism situation is notably
different from that and when i saw that the pureos website makes no
mention of the puri.sm repos, i decided that there was no problem with that

the only issue i have with pureos is one that applies equally to uruk -
that is: how exactly is pureos different from gnewsense? how exactly is
pureos different from debian? how exactly is gnewsense different from
debian? and how exactly is uruk different from trisquel? as far as i can
tell these are essentially synonyms aside from the servers hosting the
packages and the people maintaining them; and whether or not they have
non-free repos and who hosts those - that is surely the impression one
would get based on the information (or lack thereof) on the endorsed
distros web-page - to be clear: what would those short, one-sentence
descriptions say, that would not compel the reader wonder, "so these are
identical? why did they bother liberating ubuntu twice"?

if someone in 2015 wanted a FSDG-compliant debian they needed look no
further than gnewsense - it was a bit out of date at that time but not
much; so clearly, the most sensible thing to do in order to advance the
state of the art would have been to join the gnewsense team and help
push out the next release - but instead, pureos was created - this
implies one or two things - either purism approached gnewsense asking to
join the team and their help or stated goals were rejected; or they had
no interest in gnewsense and created pureos not to fill any niche but
exclusively to flatter the commercial brand of purism - i am not sure
which was the case; but either way, such splintering does not serve the
progress of FSDG distros optimally - if the purism computers were
shipped with Gnewsense2017, no one would be asking if the non-free
puri.sm repos were inappropriate; and the operating running on purism
computers would be maintained by a larger group of people, not
exclusively employees of purism

i am aware that i may be missing some facts and this is not to to
disparage purism specifically; because the same can be said for
uruk/trisquel - though as i understand, they wanted a liberated ubuntu
that was to be managed by the community rather than a BDFL, so they have
at least that one notable distinction (as in: "uruk is a community
maintained liberated version of ubuntu") - not to say whether or not
that is a valuable distinction to make; but that i dont see how pureos
distinguished itself in any way other than the words: "... with a focus
on privacy, security, and convenience"; as if to imply that debian does
not have those things - what those words mean, according to the pureos
website, is that they have certain privacy-related packages
pre-installed; presumably, packages that are also available in debian
with a simple apt-get command - IMHO, that is not a terribly meaningful
or convincing distinction to label it as something other than another
debian "spin" - to be fair, gnewsense also makes no attempt to
distinguish itself technically from debian, only ideologically

unless it can be shown that it was absolutely necessary to create pureos
rather than re-vitalize gnewsense, then it's existence can only be seen
as a publicity stunt to the detriment of gnewsense (detriment aka: "slap
in the face") - perhaps i am missing some important facts? - perhaps the
pureos effort just had more "steam" or "young blood" and so a case could
be made that the gnewsense team should have joined the fledgling pureos
effort, if only for trendy, populous reasons - i would be very
interested if someone can show this presumption to be inaccurate

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