Re: Introducing GNU Guix

[John Sullivan]

Brandon Invergo <address@hidden> writes:

> Obviously, I'm interested in maintaining a clear picture of the use of
> GSRC when something more powerful like Guix is available. It's best, I
> think, to consider it important for users of other distros who want to
> install GNU software when: a) they don't have permission to install
> system-wide, b) their distro does not provide the latest/desired
> version, c) their distro does not provide the "plain/vanilla" version,
> d) their package manager does not allow to easily rebuild a package from
> source. 

I was part of generating the idea to do GSRC, so I can say why I still
think it's important given what I had in mind then.

I thought that having a periodic coordinated release of as much of the
GNU code as possible would have many beneficial effects that don't have
to do with a user actually installing every program included in the
release: 

* Periodic coordinated releases are incentives; they give maintainers
  and contributors reasons to take action at particular times and
  therefore might help get things done.

* Since the build process is uniform, it also serves as a kind of
  quality control step. At the very least, some build errors will be
  caught; but as the project develops, maybe code that is too buggy in
  certain ways will be left out of the release.

* Helps provide an incentive (by way of clear sensible benefits) for
  maintainers to use the common infrastructure. "If you host your code
  on ftp.gnu.org, then your package can be included in the GNU Source
  Release."

* Helps provide a clearer image of what GNU is. They provide publicity
  opportunities and give potential users something they can wrap their
  mind around -- GNU is this code. Better and more grokkable image means
  more contributors, more users, and more advocates.

So, I think this is an important project with different benefits than a
packaging system designed specifically to deploy and undeploy different
configurations of software, and I hope you can continue working on it.

-john

-- 
John Sullivan | Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: 61A0963B | http://status.fsf.org/johns | http://fsf.org/blogs/RSS

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