On 1/4/08 7:51 PM, Siju George wrote:
http://www.gnewsense.org/FAQ/FAQ#toc3
Ah, don't forget to look here:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnewsense-users/2007-11/msg00042.html
with:
as we go along we find out now and then that we've got non-free software.
Some scripts have been written to help automate these checks, but it still
takes "too long".
and
I don't believe that any package manager has built-in support for license
issues and this is something that I think is a technical flaw that harms
our distro
..
I don't know how to "find" binary blobs. I dont' know what they look like
in the source, so I'm almost totally useless as to determining non-license
freedom
And reaction:
http://wiki.gnewsense.org/ForumMain/WhatSucksAboutGNewSense
Yes it is hard to find non-free software in a distribution. It is probably
much easier to start from scratch and add from day one only free software
to your distribution. So you don't have to check existing packages, you
just know that you have add only free software.
Creating a distribution from scratch is probably to much work. So we have
to go the second way: Build upon an existing distribution.
GnewSense has waste already a lot of time with PFV.
"package freedom verification"
Time in which Gnewsense
could have create a real good and up-to-date distribution. I think that's
bad for GnewSense because thereby Gnewsense lost it's momentum. Just look
at the mailinglist it calls itself a "users"-list but i haven't seen any
users question/discussion for a really long time.
So the overall question is how we can make PFV easier so that we can
concentrate more on creating an exciting distribution instead of putting
all our effort in checking licenses?
For me the answer is clear. Gnewsense should build upon a distribution
which already really cares about freedom. I can think about two possible
distribution:
(Debian and Fedora are mentioned, no OpenBSD "of course"...)
I know the question upon which distribution Gnewsense should buid on was
discussed many times before. But using a distribution which bases on a
quite good distribution (in the sense of freeness) and adds non-free
components looks like a bad decision. We see and feel this bad decisions
more and more. Gnewsense struggles now for months to get Gnewsense 100%
free. We could get this much cheaper with a different distribution and
concentrate more on making a exciting distribution which attract (many) new
users.
