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Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Guix and FSDG


From: bill-auger
Subject: Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Guix and FSDG
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 16:33:37 -0500

On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 14:10:38 -0500 Raghav wrote:
> Therefore, I request the FSDG to be revised, to allow
> codes/programs in a free system to obtain source code
> containing non-free parts, ONLY for the purpose of de-blobbing

publishing liberation scripts is not a new practice; and not
peculiar to guix - multiple FSDG distros currently publish their
liberation recipes; and their use necessarily entails acquiring
the non-FSDG sources somehow - the only alternative would be to
keep all liberation scripts private - so, the revision requested
here would have been as relevant when the FSDG was written,
years before guix existed - parabola, being derived from arch,
has worked that way since its inception; and this was surely
known when parabola was endorsed by the FSF, some eight years ago

that was not to say that we could not do things differently, if
the FSF or the community wants a more stringent treatment - we
have discussed this quite a lot within parabola (the hyperbola
team has also), and ways in which we could modify the dev tools
to publish pre-cleaned source-balls, and the user tools to always
download sources from parabola, and never from upstream; but
mainly as something of a "nice to have" bonus, TODO someday - our
interpretation of the FSDG is that it neither allows nor
disallows publishing of liberation scripts, or pristine upstream
sources - it simply does not specify either; but that omission
was not because the practice was unknown at the time when the
FSDG was written

the only peculiar difference between the guix liberation
procedures and others such as parabola and trisquel, would be
that, the "swiss-army-knife" sort of tool used by guix, assists
with both the installation of pre-made binary packages and also
the downloading of liberation scripts and compilation from
source, simply by passing different arguments to the same tool;
and that tool is an essential system component - whereas, in
order to make use of the parabola and trisquel liberation
scripts, one needs to explicitly install separate, non-essential
build tools, and to acquire the liberation scripts using some
generic tool such as a web browser, git, or wget - im not
certain, but i believe that the dragora package manager is more
similar to guix in that way - we could discuss whether or not
that subtlety is important; but i dont see it as fundamental to
the underlying issue, which is whether or not the subject of
liberation scripts should be made explicit in the FSDG

we can discuss that, one way or another; but i dont think that
an amendment would be necessary to permit the publishing of
liberation scripts, because i dont think that the FSDG currently
prohibits it



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