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Top-level
 @dthompson The question is that of the best strategy to increase the reach of free software. I hear what you say about lack of support for certain devices being an obstacle for the adoption of free systems; I can see it happening. But if we do want that software to be free as well, what should we do? Debian had a lever; now that it includes non-free firmware, it seems that we, collectively, are sending hardware vendors the message that we’ve given up. Tough issues. 30 comments
@rml @civodul @dthompson  @SteveTux @dthompson @civodul free software is as invisible in your daily life as your city's plumbing or sanitization services. the world's infrastructure is powered by free software. it would be terrible thing for that to be monopolized by private interests. @rml @dthompson @civodul  @rml @civodul the issue is that Guix is beholden to the GNU Free Software Distribution Guidelines, which state that even referring to nonfree things is not allowed. It is more likely that hell will freeze over than convincing RMS to change this policy. so, the only real option for Guix to consider is dropping FSDG, dealing with the political fallout, and adopting their own slightly relaxed guidelines. I do not envy anyone who wants to open this can of worms on the mailing list!  @civodul @dthompson I don't think hardware vendors have any financial incentive to help us out with this. FSDG distro users are such a small minority of the Linux userbase that we probably don't even show up on their radar. What I'd really like to see is more "by hackers, for hackers" type hardware appear which actually does have open drivers and firmware. Extremely unlikely, but maybe someone could inspire the creation of a well-funded co-op? @civodul @dthompson I love what Librem and Framework are doing, but if they continue to depend on Intel chipset then they'll probably never work with Linux Libre @daviwil @civodul @dthompson Well to be fair to them, truly free hardware like the MNT reform just isn't suitable for a mainstream device. There's a larger issue that we need to throw so many transistors at modern software that usable CPUs can be made at only a handful of places around the world which keep their IP tightly clutched to their chest. @daviwil @civodul @dthompson Is RISC-V a viable alternative for personal computers? I've heard that RISC-V is a free standard (as in freedom). @dthompson @daviwil @civodul Losedows (by Microsoft) is dominating in the OS market, so its unlikely to see RISC-V computer to be common until MS decides to support it. We, the free software activists, must make our own computers. have you considered playing with kmonad. With dual key functions you can get modifier keys on any key. I am currently using c and , as dual use control keys https://github.com/kmonad/kmonad @daviwil @dthompson When devices wouldn’t work on Debian out of the box, I’d like to think hardware vendors had *some* incentive to fix it. One way or another, we have to make our voice heard; we have to make it clear that these freedoms matter to us. If we don’t even ask, we’re unlikely to get anything. Hardware by and for free software folks is an interesting avenue too. We’ll see. @dthompson I just mean that it’s like enabling “non-free” in Debian: now ‘guix search’ turns up both free and proprietary things. @dthompson @civodul nixos has an interesting feature for this case: nixpkgs.config.allowUnfreePredicate You can then effectively whitelist only the packages you require and still get an error for everything else Would something similar be useful for nonguix? @aheaume @dthompson To be honest, I don’t find Nixpkgs’ handling of non-free software “interesting” at all. I contributed to Nixpkgs for ~4y. At the time, anything could get in Nixpkgs, free or not, and licensing info was often missing and was not reviewed, etc. Thus, as a user, if you chose to use only free software, you could hardly trust it to DTRT. I think mixing free and non-free in the same repo and in the same project is a big mistake. @civodul @dthompson I don’t have an opinion on how free/non-free repos should be handled, but I admire your stance and appreciate it. I’m new on Guix and even though the Guix Manual and Cookbook are amazingly written, do you think it’d be good idea for a wiki page mostly to explain how some packages work(or additional tips in the /packages page)? For example emacs-exwm looks for .exwm file otherwise loads exwm-default-config etc. Would be helpful to new users @apo11o The project accepts contributions to the Cookbook in any form! If there are tip and tricks that you think ought to be documented, please propose a new Cookbok section. If differs from a typical wiki in that we collectively will take care of keeping it up-to-date, removing outdated info, and so on. |
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@civodul @dthompson from my experience using Debian, the anti-free drivers, etc, are all distributed independently of the distro itself (unless they have since changed this), but they make it simple and easy to find and use. I definitely think guix needs to only distribute whats free; offering a clean slate is a unique and important offering to preserve, and any contamination seems in a sense nearly irreversible. but whats the downside of simply directing folks to the source, and not imposing an unnatural prohibition that most agree feels forced and thus gathers an air of ideological burearacracy?
@civodul @dthompson from my experience using Debian, the anti-free drivers, etc, are all distributed independently of the distro itself (unless they have since changed this), but they make it simple and easy to find and use. I definitely think guix needs to only distribute whats free; offering a clean slate is a unique and important offering to preserve, and any contamination seems in a sense nearly irreversible. but whats the downside of simply directing folks to the source, and not imposing an...