[GNU-linux-libre] Recognizing the GNU system as a free distro

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

The GNU Guix project [0] is about producing (1) a package manager for
the GNU system, and (2) a distribution of the GNU system (currently on
top of Linux-Libre).  We would like the distribution to be officially
recognized as an offspring of the fully free distro family.  ;-)

Part (1) is essentially done.  Part (2) is on its way: the distro
contains only ~500 packages currently.  It is self-contained, in that it
doesn’t depend on external tools or binaries to build its packages [1].
However, it is not bootable yet, so it can only be used atop a running
GNU/Linux system.  (There’s on-going work to reach the point where we
can boot directly into it.)

The distro obviously contains only free software, and it follows the FSF
free system distribution guidelines [2]; it is not based on any existing
distribution.  Package contributors perform a license and copyright
check on the packages they add.  Package meta-data records the license
of each package [3]; we do not keep track of copyright notices on a
per-file basis like Debian’s copyright files do.


So that’s it.  We are interested in feedback on freedom-related issues,
so please let us know what you think, as ask us any questions you may
have, preferably via guix-de...@gnu.org.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

[0] http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/
[1] http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#Bootstrapping
[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#Packaging-Guidelines
[3] http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#Defining-Packages


pgpHhCzgXbAXp.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Recognizing the GNU system as a free distro

[Jason Self]

Sam Geeraerts said:
 Note that some packages may contain non-free files (e.g. [a]),
 regardless of the license of the whole. There are also freedom issues
 that are unrelated to the license of the code, e.g. encouraging the use
 of non-free software [b]. I see that your packaging guidelines mention
 these issues, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

My understanding is that package source code is obtained directly from
the developers, whether that's ftp.gnu.org or Sourceforge or whatever.
In the cases Sam mentions it seems that there will need to be a way to
host modified versions of such problematic programs somewhere with the
necessary changes already made. In this way people that use the Guix
package manager to compile  install from source don't end up
downloading the problematic source code. hydra.gnu.org could even use
that location to build those program from if needed.