Re: [Health] Installing GNU Health on Trisquel 8

[Mathias Behrle]

* Ricardo Morte Ferrer: " [Health] Installing GNU Health on Trisquel 8" (Mon, 1
  Jul 2019 21:57:13 +0200):

Hi Ricardo,

> here I send you the asnwer from the Trisquel forum, so that we can find
> the better way to install GNU Health on Trisquel 8:
> 
> The problem is that including pip would violate the GNU Free System
> Distribution Guidelines,[1] which state:
> 
> "A free system distribution must not steer users towards obtaining any
> nonfree information for practical use, or encourage them to do so. The
> system should have no repositories for nonfree software and no specific
> recipes for installation of particular nonfree programs. Nor should the
> distribution refer to third-party repositories that are not committed to
> only including free software"

Here is for sure not the place to discuss the Distribution Guidelines of
Trisquel, but I think they go to far with respect to pip. Pip is not PyPi. See
below.

> > "I guess you can always install it. All the python packages that GNU
> > Health uses are Libre, so no worries on that.  
> 
> Installing it should be easy. Packages in the PyPi repository use
> setuptools, so they are not hard to build. After verifying that a PyPi
> package and all of its dependencies are free, you can install it
> manually. See my comment here[2] and onpon4's correction.

What is the difference between setuptools and pip used as an installation
tool resp. package manager? The procedure is exactly the same.
pip is used by GnuHealth (as well as other softwares) as an installation tool,
in contrast to get random packages from PyPi. Pip doesn't advertise nor promote
any software, it is a tool.

The recommendation still points to the "PyPi repository" which is the
repository you can get non-free packages from. Installing them with setuptools
is basically in no way different than installing with pip.

> > PS: You should talk to the Trisquel team, and ask them to include pip.The
> > argument of not including pip because there might be some non-free
> > software on pypi, IMHO, is way restrictive".  
> 
> It is inaccurate to say that "there *might* be some non-free software on
> pypi," because we know for a fact that there is non-free software on
> PyPi.[3]

Ok. What about wget, curl, ...? We know there *is* non-free software available
in the net and all those tools can be used to get it. This is where the intent
to provide freedom can get the other way round: when you prevent your users from
doing what they want to do. It is always a trade-off.

Best,
Mathias

> 
> [1]
> https://web.archive.org/web/20190629121929/http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
> [2]
> https://trisquel.info/en/forum/pip-python-pip-doesnt-work-trisquel#comment-140235
> [3] https://trisquel.info/en/issues/3741";
> 
> Best regards,
> Ricardo
> 



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    Mathias Behrle
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