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Hi, |
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|
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I recently emailed the Gentoo PR team, voicing my concerns about the |
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amount of non-free software within Gentoo. I got an interesting response |
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from Sebastian Pipping, who said that while Gentoo is all about choice, |
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including the choice to install non-free software, the project is |
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interested in making it easy for people to run a 100% free system, |
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should they choose that path. |
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|
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I found out about the license filtering feature in the dev version of |
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portage, and used it to remove all the non-free software from my |
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system. However, it wasn't a perfect experience. Based on what Sebastian |
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had to say, and my own experience using it, I have a few suggestions. |
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|
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1) Not all of the licenses are completely accurate. For example, the |
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Linux kernels are listed as soley GPL-2, yet they contain blobs of |
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non-free firmware. Perhaps a general-purpose "not-free" license could be |
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appended to such packages. This would only affect people who choose to |
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use the feature. It could be minused from the FSF-APPROVED group for |
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example. |
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|
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Also relating to this, what is freedist? The package app-text/dos2unix |
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lists 'freedist' as its license, and /usr/portage/licenses/freedist says |
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only "Freely Distributable". Several other packages do this, and I'm |
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sure it's not correct. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the dos2unix |
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package is from http://www.thefreecountry.com/tofrodos/, which clearly |
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says its GPLv2. Packages like this could be looked into and fixed. |
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|
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2) There are no free versions of the kernel in the main tree. The Latin |
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American FSF maintains blob-free kernels at |
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http://www.linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/releases/. They could |
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be added alongside the official vanilla ebuilds. |
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|
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3) Some free software packages bring in non-free optional dependencies |
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by default. For example, media-gfx/imagemagick brings in |
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media-fonts/corefonts. As suggested by Sebastian, a free profile could be |
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created, that changes these defaults, to reduce the hassle of |
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maintaining a free system. Again, this would only affect users who |
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choose to use that profile. |
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|
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4) Using something like ACCEPT_LICENSES="-* @FSF-APPROVED" is a good |
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start, but its quite a hassle to keep checking all the licenses. One |
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annoyance is packages like sys-devel/gcc. gcc has the libgcc license, |
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which is just GPLv2+, with some extra permissions granted. Although it's |
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important to make such a distinction, these extra freedoms are |
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irrelevant to license filtering. |
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|
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I suppose the only feasible way to fix this would be to expand the |
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license groups in /usr/portage/profiles/license_groups. Would it cause |
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any problems if they were quite large? |
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|
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Another option might be to introduce an optional IS_FREE="yes/no" option |
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to the ebuild files, which could override the other license settings. |
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|
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5) Documentation on how to set up and maintain a fully free system could |
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be added. |
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|
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|
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To summarize, my general idea is to fix some licensing issues, introduce |
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the libre kernels and have a 100% free profile that would create the |
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least possible amount of hassle for anyone using it. This in turn would |
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make Gentoo more accessible to the free software community, without |
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affecting people that don't use the profile. |
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|
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This is my first post here, so I apologize if it's misdirected. I'm not |
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sure if I'd really be able to help much on the technical side, but if |
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this garners any cooperation, I'll gladly help out with anything I can. |
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If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd be very grateful. |
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|
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Kind Regards, |
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Vincent Launchbury. |