Re: [GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[Sam Geeraerts]

Op Sat, 20 Jan 2018 20:38:09 -0500
schreef bill-auger :

> unless it can be shown that it was absolutely necessary to create
> pureos rather than re-vitalize gnewsense, then it's existence can
> only be seen as a publicity stunt to the detriment of gnewsense
> (detriment aka: "slap in the face") - perhaps i am missing some
> important facts? - perhaps the pureos effort just had more "steam" or
> "young blood" and so a case could be made that the gnewsense team
> should have joined the fledgling pureos effort, if only for trendy,
> populous reasons - i would be very interested if someone can show
> this presumption to be inaccurate

I have met some people from PureOS at FOSDEM. They were mostly involved
with the upcoming pocket device and didn't know all the whys and hows
of PureOS, but it seems that Purism were not really aware of gNewSense.
Maybe there were other motives as well, but they didn't say in the
short time that we talked.

I hope to stay in touch with them to find out how much they have in
common with gNewSense and how we can work together.


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Re: [GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jan 20, 2018, bill-auger  wrote:

> the purism situation is notably different from that and when i saw
> that the pureos website makes no mention of the puri.sm repos, i
> decided that there was no problem with that

Indeed, thanks for bringing that to my attention.  I had not realized
pureos had its own separate website, and for some reason I'd assumed all
of pureos was right there next to the nonfree repos I linked to
(so much for my not leading people towards non-Free Software :-)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist|Red Hat Brasil GNU Toolchain Engineer

Re: [GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[alimiracle]

Having more than one distro Depends in same base A good idea
why?
- Ignite the spirit of competition
- Take advantage of the ideas for each distro
For example
 you the owner of the distro afraid to apply the idea
another Distro 
apply this  idea

If you find the idea good
u will apply this  idea
Anyway
uruk gnu/linux
is Different
you can find the Differents
useing uruk web site
and the blog

Re: [GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[bill-auger]

my first though this morning was to claim a highly coveted GNU-Buck by
reporting the purio.sm non-free repos as this does appear to be exactly
the same thing that makes debian nonFSDG; but after some thought, i
realizedthere is a distinction in that debian exists solely for the
purpose of producing debian and the debian non-free repos exists solely
for the purpose of enhancing debian - the purism situation is notably
different from that and when i saw that the pureos website makes no
mention of the puri.sm repos, i decided that there was no problem with that

the only issue i have with pureos is one that applies equally to uruk -
that is: how exactly is pureos different from gnewsense? how exactly is
pureos different from debian? how exactly is gnewsense different from
debian? and how exactly is uruk different from trisquel? as far as i can
tell these are essentially synonyms aside from the servers hosting the
packages and the people maintaining them; and whether or not they have
non-free repos and who hosts those - that is surely the impression one
would get based on the information (or lack thereof) on the endorsed
distros web-page - to be clear: what would those short, one-sentence
descriptions say, that would not compel the reader wonder, "so these are
identical? why did they bother liberating ubuntu twice"?

if someone in 2015 wanted a FSDG-compliant debian they needed look no
further than gnewsense - it was a bit out of date at that time but not
much; so clearly, the most sensible thing to do in order to advance the
state of the art would have been to join the gnewsense team and help
push out the next release - but instead, pureos was created - this
implies one or two things - either purism approached gnewsense asking to
join the team and their help or stated goals were rejected; or they had
no interest in gnewsense and created pureos not to fill any niche but
exclusively to flatter the commercial brand of purism - i am not sure
which was the case; but either way, such splintering does not serve the
progress of FSDG distros optimally - if the purism computers were
shipped with Gnewsense2017, no one would be asking if the non-free
puri.sm repos were inappropriate; and the operating running on purism
computers would be maintained by a larger group of people, not
exclusively employees of purism

i am aware that i may be missing some facts and this is not to to
disparage purism specifically; because the same can be said for
uruk/trisquel - though as i understand, they wanted a liberated ubuntu
that was to be managed by the community rather than a BDFL, so they have
at least that one notable distinction (as in: "uruk is a community
maintained liberated version of ubuntu") - not to say whether or not
that is a valuable distinction to make; but that i dont see how pureos
distinguished itself in any way other than the words: "... with a focus
on privacy, security, and convenience"; as if to imply that debian does
not have those things - what those words mean, according to the pureos
website, is that they have certain privacy-related packages
pre-installed; presumably, packages that are also available in debian
with a simple apt-get command - IMHO, that is not a terribly meaningful
or convincing distinction to label it as something other than another
debian "spin" - to be fair, gnewsense also makes no attempt to
distinguish itself technically from debian, only ideologically

unless it can be shown that it was absolutely necessary to create pureos
rather than re-vitalize gnewsense, then it's existence can only be seen
as a publicity stunt to the detriment of gnewsense (detriment aka: "slap
in the face") - perhaps i am missing some important facts? - perhaps the
pureos effort just had more "steam" or "young blood" and so a case could
be made that the gnewsense team should have joined the fledgling pureos
effort, if only for trendy, populous reasons - i would be very
interested if someone can show this presumption to be inaccurate



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Re: [GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[Riley Baird]

And, while we're on the topic, I'd like to remind everyone that it's
been more than 3 years since LibertyBSD was released.

On Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:45:47 -0800
Ivan Zaigralin  wrote:

> I think this is a very good idea. I have to confess, we are not feeling very 
> confident while FreeSlack is stalling in the review queue.
> 
> In our case, we've been informed that "FreeSlack" is afoul of FSDG because 
> it's too similar to "Slackware". We pitched "Freenix" and "FXP" as 
> replacement 
> distribution names in April 2017, and haven't heard a word since. This puts 
> us 
> in an interesting position: when our users ask us, so what are you guys 
> called 
> again?, all we can say is: not FreeSlack.
> 
> We also receive regular suggestions/requests to get the FSF certification. 
> And 
> of course we do tell our users what exactly is going on, the way we see it 
> from our side, but wouldn't it be like 100 times more easy and reassuring for 
> the users to read FSF's own Changelog of the review process? If users rely on 
> FSF certification to pick distributions, they won't be quick to blindly trust 
> the claims of progress made by projects still under initial review.
> 
> On Friday, January 19, 2018 14:51:02 Robert Call wrote:
> > If the problem is time and resources, could the FSF maybe start a page
> > on https://libreplanet.org that would show : the distros that have
> > asked the FSF to be reviewed, which ones have started the public review
> > process and document the issues have been found? It would offer a bit
> > more transparency and everyone would be on the same page as to where in
> > the review process the distros are.
> > 
> > Maybe the endorsed distro review process could be handled in similar
> > way that the FSF directory is maintained and the FSF could teach people
> > where to look for non-free things in these distros. The goal would be
> > to get more people actively involved in the review process.
> > 
> > Hopefully these (or other) solutions could pave a way forward. Even
> > with a lack of time and resources, I don't think it is acceptable to
> > not respond to distro maintainers that had already started the review
> > process, just a "we are still looking into it" or "there is still an
> > issue with x" would be sufficient.

Re: [GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jan 19, 2018, Robert Call  wrote:

> For example, PureOS was added to the endorsed distro list even with
> several long standing issues (mainly the usage of the debain kernel
> which advertises missing non-free firmware blobs). ConnochaetOS[1] was
> submitted for review was denied based on the fact that they were using
> the Debian deblobbing scripts vs. the linux-libre deblobbing scripts.
> Is this fair?

It certainly sounds odd.  But, honestly, right now I'm more concerned
that updates for PureOS seem to have been published in a non-free repo.
Specifically, non-free microcode for CPUs affected by Spectre.  Surely
we don't mean to endorse distros that do that, do we?

Purism's messaging seems to attempt to distance their new nonfree repos
and dists from PureOS, but...  I fail to see the difference between that
and what Debian does.  But then, I haven't looked very closely.  Am I
missing something?

https://puri.sm/posts/purism-patches-meltdown-and-spectre-variant-2-both-included-in-all-new-librem-laptops/
https://deb.puri.sm/pureos/dists/purism-nonfree/
https://deb.puri.sm/pureos/pool/non-free/i/intel-microcode/

Thoughts?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighterhttp://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist|Red Hat Brasil GNU Toolchain Engineer

Re: [GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[bill-auger]

On 01/19/2018 02:51 PM, Robert Call wrote:
> could the FSF maybe start a page
> on https://libreplanet.org that would show : the distros that have
> asked the FSF to be reviewed, which ones have started the public review


there is such a page:

https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Incoming_distros

AFAIK it was never "official" so to speak, and as best as i can tell,
neither is this mailing list - those wiki pages and this mailing list
seem to be almost entirely by and for the community and it is probably
the case that any information added to the wiki came only from what is
seen on this mailing list - the "incoming distros" wiki has fallen
mostly out of use in recent years - i gave it a cleaning about 6 months
ago and raised several questions of how best to manage it and offered
several similar ideas as you expressed on to how improve transparency
and community involvement - like you, very much hope some of those ideas
are realized someday

https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2017-08/msg00035.html



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Re: [GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[Jean Louis]

On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 11:57:00AM -0500, Robert Call wrote:
> On Fri, 2018-01-19 at 10:57 -0500, bill-auger wrote:
> > On 01/19/2018 03:19 AM, alimira...@riseup.net wrote:
> > > hi
> > > What about add uruk gnu/linux to gnu free list
> > > I asck this Questions  again
> > > Let's finish this long long story
> > > 
> > 
> > the FSDG says to request evaluation by sending an email to
> >  with a description of the system and a link to
> > the
> > distro web page
> > 
> 
> Responding in this way does not help since they had already done this.
> There have been a few threads already about Uruk GNU/Linux. I'm still
> quite infuriated that the Free Software Foundation is giving special
> treatment for some over others. At lest Uruk uses the linux-libre
> kernel and they did set up their own repository that they control.
> While they still leverage Trisquel's repositories, I could understand
> that it does take quite a bit in terms of infrastructure to fully
> maintain a standalone repository. The FSF should be willing to help if
> there is a problem with a lack of infrastructure. If I need to reach
> out to Uruk and try to remedy this issue I will.
> 
> If the FSF continues to pick favorites, I personally would have to
> withdraw my support of the Free Software Foundation. 

Don't rush with such statements, I do not see
which facts did you observe that "FSF is picking
favorites"?

Did you contact personally somebody from FSF and
asked what is wrong? Did they answer to you?

Jean

Re: [GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[Robert Call]

On Fri, 2018-01-19 at 10:57 -0500, bill-auger wrote:
> On 01/19/2018 03:19 AM, alimira...@riseup.net wrote:
> > hi
> > What about add uruk gnu/linux to gnu free list
> > I asck this Questions  again
> > Let's finish this long long story
> > 
> 
> the FSDG says to request evaluation by sending an email to
>  with a description of the system and a link to
> the
> distro web page
> 

Responding in this way does not help since they had already done this.
There have been a few threads already about Uruk GNU/Linux. I'm still
quite infuriated that the Free Software Foundation is giving special
treatment for some over others. At lest Uruk uses the linux-libre
kernel and they did set up their own repository that they control.
While they still leverage Trisquel's repositories, I could understand
that it does take quite a bit in terms of infrastructure to fully
maintain a standalone repository. The FSF should be willing to help if
there is a problem with a lack of infrastructure. If I need to reach
out to Uruk and try to remedy this issue I will.

If the FSF continues to pick favorites, I personally would have to
withdraw my support of the Free Software Foundation. 

--
Robert Call (Bob)
b...@bobcall.me
https://bobcall.me

Re: [GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[bill-auger]

On 01/19/2018 03:19 AM, alimira...@riseup.net wrote:
> hi
> What about add uruk gnu/linux to gnu free list
> I asck this Questions  again
> Let's finish this long long story
> 

the FSDG says to request evaluation by sending an email to
 with a description of the system and a link to the
distro web page



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[GNU-linux-libre] add uruk gnu/linux

[alimiracle]

hi
What about add uruk gnu/linux to gnu free list
I asck this Questions  again
Let's finish this long long story