Re: [H-source-users] recognized/accepted distros

[bill-auger]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 18:38:36 -0500 Luis wrote:
> distros names makes it a 
> bit more recognizable approach than just Linux-libre or Debian kernel.

i agree - i waws not suggesting to present "linux-libre" or
"the debian kernel". among the options - just the opposite, i
was suggesting to allow the distro string to be un-constrained,
as to avoid imposing the artificial restriction, that
submissions from any non-whitelisted distros are necessarily
invalid

there are other libre distros other than those endorsed by the
FSF, which could run the software as-is (gentoo in it's
libre-only configuration, freenix, uruk, gnuinos, etc) - if
people are inclined to use any of those distros (or make their
own), the FSF should be eager to accommodate that use-case, not
to reject it as invalid

what i intended, by mentioning "linux-libre" or "the debian
kernel" as the important factor (and i neglected to mention
'hurd'), was that perhaps the client could determine which
kernel is running - if that is a known libre kernel; then the
submission could be considered as valid, technically


On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 18:38:36 -0500 Luis wrote:
> I think that h-node.org being one of the FSF projects, the FSF would 
> prefer to endorse/promote the use of completely free distros

that makes perfect sense if this project was a public service,
and we were it's admins - naturally, the FSF may want to promote
libre distros on their running instance of the software; and i
agree with that

from our perspective though, this project is not that public
service - Yuchen just made it clear, that we have no access to
the FSF's instance; so there is nothing that we could do,
to govern which clients are allowed to connect to the FSF's
instance, or which distros will be presented on the h-node.org
website - from our perspective, this project is only the source
code, no different than any other software project; and the FSF
is just one user

i dont believe that any GNU software makes a distinction about
which OSes one must use - people who install their own copy of
h-source, may want to include their favorite distro on the
whitelist, and perhaps only that one distro - if there are any
usage restrictions, they should be technical ones, not imposed
artificially

what that normally suggests, is that the source code could be
generic and un-opinionated - so, per the 'occam's razor'
principle: it should be generic and un-opinionated - this is the
very common "re-branding" use-case, which is easily accommodated
generically in the source code

with that use-csae in mind, the proper thing to do, would be to
make the whitelist user-configurable, outside the source code,
with the existing hard-coded whitelist as the default set