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Gentoo should be allowed for distribution, under some circumstances
submitted by LukeDashjr, 14:12, 26 Junio 2012
ARGUMENTO: other
ESTADO: opened
PRIORIDAD: medium
Descripción:
Gentoo is a metadistribution that can be used as the basis for a completely free OS. It should be allowed as an option in that scenario only - maybe a hidden option that ensures the submitter has configured their OS to be only free software?

In /etc/make.conf, the following line should be used:

ACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FSF-APPROVED"
Mensajes:
LukeDashjr:
In the meantime, I am marking my submissions as "Trisquel 5.5 Brigantia" I presume h-node's purpose is to document free software support for hardware, regardless of how easy it might or might not be to add non-free software to the OS tested on (the latter criteria is useless and does not help the community at all).
submitted by LukeDashjr, 14:14, 26 Junio 2012
tonicucoz:

I presume h-node's purpose is to document free software support for hardware, regardless of how easy it might or might not be to add non-free software to the OS tested on (the latter criteria is useless and does not help the community at all).

Hi LukeDashjr, this statement should be true, but the problem is that the user usually doesn't know if he has some non-free software installed (an example are the kernel blobs or some software taken from the repos), so we have to assure that the user tests the device with a distro in which it is very hard to add non-free software. At h-node we simply need a test suite: "test your hardware with this distro, if it works then it works with free software".

regardless of how easy it might or might not be to add non-free software to the OS tested on

According to what specified above (by me), it is important to know how easy it might or might not be to add non-free software to the OS tested on

About Gentoo: we can't make exceptions, it would be too difficult to manage this issue, so please test your device with Trisquel or a different fully free distro. Please let me know when you have tested with Trisquel or a different fully free distro...

Is this the device added by you? http://www.h-node.org/printers/view/en/673/Samsung-ML-2510-Series/1/1/undef/undef/undef/undef/undef/undef

submitted by tonicucoz, 06:21, 27 Junio 2012
LukeDashjr:
My Gentoo-derived distro *is* fully free. If h-node is going to exclude too much info to be useful, I will have to just hope someone forks the project - I'm not interesting in "downgrading" to the listed OSes which all provide me with significantly less freedom than my current completely free OS (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't seem to support USE flags or anything equivalent to control compilation).
submitted by LukeDashjr, 21:53, 27 Junio 2012
tonicucoz:

Ok, I believe you, your Gentoo-derived distro is fully free. But this is not the problem. Also the last version of Debian is fully free but we don't accept Debian for the same reason, because it is too easy to install non-free software. It is mainly because Debian does not use linux-libre, that prevents users to install many non-free drivers, and because Debian has some non free repositories

I don't asking you to "downgrade" to some other distro, I'm only asking you to test the device with one of the listed distros (also using the live cd). Many devices are tested using Trisquel livecd.

I'm sure that there are many very good distros (such as Debian or Gentoo) that allow users to do what they want with their computer, but this is not the point. Personally I would suggest you to keep using Gentoo if you like that distro, but we need a way to assure that all the hardware submitted to h-node is free. As already said, we can't accept exceptions, it would be very hard for us to manage them. The easiest way is to allow only distros which have a firm policy commitment to only include and only propose free software.

but they don't seem to support USE flags or anything equivalent to control compilation)

Sorry, I don't know what this means, I'm not expert about compilation. Perhaps you can explain me what this means

submitted by tonicucoz, 02:07, 28 Junio 2012
LukeDashjr:

I'm sure make-it-difficult-to-use-nonfree-software distros like Trisquel support plenty of hardware, but I'm also pretty sure that they *don't* support everything that works with free software because of the rigidness of packages.

Restricting OS selection as h-node presently does really just forces people to provide misinformation for that field.

Gentoo's USE flags and similar features allow me to not only make my system free software only, but glib/GTK-free too (for example). Other features allow me to use unstable and "testing" versions of specific packages (notably, drivers!) while still sticking to stable versions of the rest of the OS.

submitted by LukeDashjr, 10:19, 28 Junio 2012
tonicucoz:

but I'm also pretty sure that they *don't* support everything that works with free software because of the rigidness of packages.

it could be true, but anyway it is less important than the fact of inserting a device and mark it as working with free software when some non free drivers has been used (even if it is not your case).

Restricting OS selection as h-node presently does really just forces people to provide misinformation for that field.

Yes, it could be true, one could say he has tested the device with Trisquel even if he has used Ubuntu or Suse, but I think that saying that those distro are not allowed is, in some way, a strong statement. Indeed you have done exactly so (tested with Gentoo and marked as Trisquel) but then you have noticed this fact in the issue page. And this issue is important to better specify and reflect upon the h-node policy.

For example people that usually use Ubuntu could feel harmed by the fact that that distribution (that they use every day) is not allowed here, and I believe that most of the them simply decide to ignore h-node.org because they can't submit hardware tested with their distro. But at the same time they have to consider this question: "why our distro is not allowed?" And the answer is: "because it is full of non-free software". And I think that, in some way, it is a very good way to highlights those distributions that have only free software and to show how things could be done in a different and better way. So even if someone could provide misinformation for that field, I think that that field could be useful to delimit, strong and increase a community of people that want use and share only free software.

About Gentoo: it is a very strange distro because it is not really a distro and someone (if competent) can build his operating system fully free. But really, it would be very difficult to understand when such a distro should be allowed (or not).

submitted by tonicucoz, 18:21, 28 Junio 2012
tonicucoz:

Sorry form my bad English:

I think that that field could be useful to delimit, strong strengthen and increase a community of people that want to use and share only free software.

submitted by tonicucoz, 18:27, 28 Junio 2012
lammi87:

Hi, this is lammi87.

I agree with tonicucoz. LukeDashjr, you have found a distro which suits you the best and you are obviously skilled enough to keep it fully free. That is very good for you and I encourage you to continue on your path.

The problem here is that other people might not be as skillful as you are and therefore they might use the same distro as you but with some non-free software. Then some devices which work with non-free software but not with free software would be added to h-node. This would be even encouraged. I'm afraid this would defeat the whole purpose the h-node has.

So, LukeDashjr, please keep using your distro of choise and please keep contributing to h-node by using some live-cd of a fully free distro which is accepted by FSF and h-node. If you really want, you can publish your version of Gentoo and try to get other people to use it as well and eventually get it accepted as a fully free distro by the FSF. You have the freedom to do so, its your choise.

submitted by lammi87, 13:41, 29 Junio 2012

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