On 1/11/2021 05:46, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli wrote:
Though I really like the idea of sharing the work between the
distributions.
The question would also be how to share it practically speaking.
Back when (2012) I was pretty active on the non-FSDG wiki page I asked
myself that same question and shared some thoughts on the Talk page [1].
I often had the feeling that the wiki page was too Debian-based focussed
and not technical/machine-readable enough.
[1]
https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines
Or maybe we need to get there step by step?
Perhaps a first step that should be fairly easy for each distro is to
make a list of all modified/deleted packages. Extract a list of common
entries (might need some normalization). Ignore the differences for now,
they can be discussed once the process is figured out. Edit the non-FSDG
wiki page to match that list (title + package name to start, the other
fields can be filled in later).
In Parabola for instance if we have our deblob instructions in an
mksource() function in the package definitions. But that content could
also be moved to scripts to enable other distributions to reuse them.
Other distros probably have something similar (e.g. Trisquel's package
helpers). The wiki entries could be enriched with a link to each
distro's scripts.
I'm not thinking further ahead, the next step might present itself more
readily when this is done. I think this would already help quite a bit
with sharing between distros and with the verification of distros that
want to apply for inclusion in the free distro list.
As part of my work on Replicant 11 (which is funded by NLnet) I also
need to find and remove nonfree software, and I was also pointed to
automatic tools to detect licenses (ScanCode and Ruby Licensee) by
someone working at the FSFE, and I want to try them.
There's also Fossology.
I think that there is still a lot of subjectivity in some corner
cases, but I completely agree with your conclusion as it would make no
sense to decide that per-distribution or even per contributor.
Instead having different people discuss the corner cases could help us
come to better conclusions and we'd probably all learn in the process
as well and become better at it.
Indeed. Hopefully, smoothing the collaboration process will help to
learn from each other and align subjectivity when it arises.
My 2 cents.
Regards,
Sam