[task #15731] Submission of Davis Remmel

[Amin Bandali]

Follow-up Comment #10, task #15731 (project administration):

Hello Davis, Ineiev,

Seeing Davis's request for a second opinion, I thought I'd chime in.
Though I will preface my message with the fact that I'm a fairly new
Savannah hacker, and less experienced than Ineiev certainly in reviewing
new project registration applications.

I agree that we should strive to not move the goalposts on a per-project
basis and not impose arbitrary additional conditions than what is stated
on the Savannah Hosting Requirements document, to use a standard process
for all applications with as much as objectivity as possible.

I will list a few questions that may help move this application further.

Davis, do I understand correctly that a reMarkable tablet can be used in
freedom without requiring the user to run any nonfree software?  Was
your reddit link showing Debian running on the tablet a demonstration of
that?

>From a quick search, it seems that reMarkable uses an i.MX6 processor,
based on the ARMv7 architecture.  This is likely good news, since quite
a few GNU/Linux distributions support this architecture.  Thus, if you
were able to get Debian's ARMv7 port running on it, there is hope that
you would also be able to get an FSDG-approved distribution running on
it, given the distribution supports the processor archiecture.  So this
would come down to which FSDG-compliant distros support ARMv7.  Of the
ones listed at <https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html>, it seems
that Parabola and GNU Guix System provide installation images for ARMv7.
Thus, if these can run on reMarkable, it would alleviate the concerns
and not require the stock OS to be FSDG-approved.

Lastly, to quote the Savannah Hosting Requirements,

> It is ok for the program to run on nonfree platforms or nonfree
> operating systems, and to work with well-known nonfree applications,
> in addition to working with free software, provided it gives the free
> software at least as good support as it gives to nonfree counterparts.
> In other words, at no time, in no way, should your program put free
> software users at a disadvantage compared to those willing to use
> proprietary software.

Considering the demonstration of running Debian on reMarkable, if it is
without the need to enable Debian's `non-free` repository, I believe it
indirectly checks this box for RCU.  Even more so if GNU Guix System
and/or Parabola can run on reMarkable as well.

Hope this helps.


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