Re: Leaving the guix project

[Ricardo Wurmus]

David Craven <address@hidden> writes:

>> I think if you posit a free software project that works in the way you
>> describe ("on its own"), it would work very much like Guile works
>> right now.
>
> An operating system has to work on all hardware. Asking people to buy a
> RYF approved device to run guixsd is no different than apple requiring you
> to buy an apple computer to run mac os x.

This is clearly hyperbole.  There are many pieces of hardware that are
not RYF certified and that work without firmware blobs.

> The FSDG and GNU philosophy prevent me from offering any kind of help
> and require me to do it hidden.

It is no exaggeration to say that Guix makes it easy to build kernel
variants.  Guix also makes it easy for people to share their packages
with others via “guix publish”.  Users can opt to run non-free software
either by building the packages themselves or by downloading substitutes
from people they trust who offer them.

However, as a project we don’t want to legitimise non-free software, so
we won’t offer recipes to install it.  We don’t look down on people who
run non-free software (unless they force or persuade other people to use
non-free software as well).  I’m not a bad person when I run proprietary
software; I’m the one harmed when using proprietary software.  As a
projet that distributes software we have a position in which we must
make a decision based on morals, and our decision is not to treat
proprietary software as a legitimate alternative.

This decision is reflected in the policy not to use official project
channels to promote the use of non-free software.  “Promote” includes
suggestions and instructions to build vanilla Linux (which includes more
than 150MB of binary blobs) to use hardware that forces them to either
use proprietary software or abandon the hardware.

As an aside, I’d also like to point you to an interview[1] with
Alexandre Oliva of Linux libre:

    Indeed, I became aware that some users have got the idea that
    blocking the loading of blobs is a feature. It's not; it's just a
    bug that's quite difficult to fix. The decision on whether or not to
    use a piece of software, be it Free or not, should belong to the
    users, and it's not our intent to make that difficult.

    What we don't want to do is to bait users into a trap, so our plan
    to address both issues above is to reinstate the requests, but using
    some form of hashing on the blob name so that, if you chose to
    install it, it will be found (by the kernel itself, or by a suitably
    modified hotplug script), but if you don't, it won't lead you to the
    trap.

[1]: 
https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/blogs/lxo/2013-11-08-linux-libre-interview-by-bruce-byfield.en.html

--
Ricardo

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