Re: Guix and FSDG

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

Hello Clément,

Clément Lassieur <address@hidden> writes:

> Giovanni Biscuolo <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> please can you file a bug?
>> the bug could (should) be specific to the zpaq package
>
> No, it's common to all packages (use 'guix build -S --no-substitutes' to
> reproduce easily).  And the documentation[1] doesn't say it shouldn't
> behave this way.  It says:

[...]

Oh I forgot this part of the manual, sorry!  That is the relevant part
of our documentation that explains the technical measures taken by Guix
to help packagers and maintainers in keeping Guix FSDG compliant.

Maybe (maybe!) that section can be expanded, i.e. incorporating a
reworked version of the explanation David Thompson gave us on Fri, 22
Nov 2019 12:03:36 -0500, but I'm not able to propose a patch to that
section of the manual: patches wellcome! :-)

Also, I misinterpreted the role of the snippet code in package
definition and that is why I asked for a bug report: nevermind! :-S

To be absolutely clear, I do _not_ think that downloading a source
containing some non-free code subset in order to automatically build a
freed package violates the FSDG, indeed it makes the liberating proces
_practical_; automating that the Guix way is also /cool/ \O/

I find this comment [1] on GNU-linux-libre by bill-auger interesting
(footnote added by me):

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

[...]  most distros have tools to assist users in re-building packages
from source if they want to; and even trisquel, with a predominantly
non-technical user-base, publishes librification recipes for the curious
and enthusiastic - the icecat 'makeicecat' [2] script is no different in
this respect - does that put icecat outside of the FSDG?  [...]

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

The "Guix and FSDG" relationship is very clear to me (also thanks to
this thread) and I wish some sort of FSF FAQs on this specific topic in
order to prevent future threads like this in the future :-D

Sorry for the additional noise!

Thanks! Gio'

[...]

[1] https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/gnu-linux-libre/2019-11/msg00002.html

[2] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git/tree/makeicecat

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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