Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Re: any Free BSD variant?

[Karl Goetz]

On Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:43:58 +0300
Yavor Doganov <address@hidden> wrote:

> Graziano Sorbaioli wrote:

Lots of trimming by me.

> > Sure maybe this could not seem the easiest and best way to do it
> > but I think that, like gnewsense, people will come and collaborate
> > if they trust the idea of a pure gnu fully free system.
> 
> Yes, I believe that.  Although very slowly, interested
> developers/users will find their way through.  Furthermore, in the
> free world there is no clear distinction between a developer and a
> user, and that's a good thing.

The distinction exists, but is not solid - people can move between
groups.

> > Me, Giuseppe Scrivano and other gnu people tried too many times to
> > talk to them with no result.
> 
> :-{

Are you talking about the Iceweasel thing? I didn't think of that as
'no result', just not the result you were hoping for.
(IIRC the maintainers would accept a patch to include the icecat
functionality as an extension, rather then maintaining another copy of
the full codebase).

> Even if the whole FSF gang + all software freedom supporters become
> DDs, peterb becomes DPL, rms becomes Secretary and johns becomes Chief
> ftpmaster, I can't see a chance of changing Debian.

hehehe.

> > Actually two versions of gNewSense are based on debian: the mips
> > version I am currently using on my Lemote Yeeloong, and the ppc one
> > (i386 32 and 64 bit are still ubuntu based for now).
> 
> Yes, I'm aware of that.  Does the powerpc port work for OldWorld Macs
> (both of my powerpc machines are fairly old, and I'd like to replace
> Debian with gNS, although they're currently down because of hardware
> issues)?

With some hacking should work on G3/4/5. Not sure how much hacking will
be involved, but may mean running Xorg in framebuffer (PPC isn't well
loved these days sadly).

> > We should create a gnu community repository (another thing which is
> > work in progress for gnewsense devs) where we could put all that
> > things debian don't have/don't want: linux-libre, gnu icecat and so
> > on.
> 
> This is one possibility.  IIRC, this is similar to the way Fedora was
> born; it was Fedora Core initially + 1 or more community repos which
> were later merged to become simply Fedora.
> 
> Another one is to use Debian's distinction, e.g. hurd-i386 and
> kfreebsd-* are all in the official archive, but they're not "release
> architectures".  I'd favor this approach as it's easier to manage.

I think we can make use of both.
I plan to make use of both.

> > I see this "community repo" as the first step towards an indipendent
> > gnu os.
> 
> I won't name it an "independent GNU OS" because everything we use is a
> GNU OS, one way or another.  The so called "community repos" have
> existed even within Debian, cf. debian-multimedia.  I'm not sure this
> is TRT; I have a feeling that there is a tendency of further
> fragmentation.

TRT?
 
> OTOH, keeping the basic system as stable as possible is very
> important.  I have discovered quite a lot of bugs when compiling GNOME

Do you mean 'stable' as in 'low churn' or 'wont crash'? something else?

> > First we start to use debian main as a base and add our libre
> > packages via our repo, in the future we could have our own version
> > of every package until all the system is hosted on fsf servers and
> > composed only of libre gnu packages.
> 
> Having a dedicated maintainer for each package is a distant goal,
> especially having in mind the rate of packages' additions in Debian.
> It is enough to stabilize a distro with a few natively maintained
> packages + the rest derived, increasing the count of the former with
> every release.  Practice will show what is best, I think.

Yup.

> > 0) complete the process of switching all gnewsense versions from
> > ubuntu to debian (mips is almost finished, ppc is work in progress,
> > i386 32 and 64bit have yet to start).
> 
> I was not aware that the plan for gNS was to switch to Debian.  I'm
> very happy to learn this now.

Its been briefly discussed. Not definite. I'll talk with Paul about it
when we catch up in a few weeks and get his POV. So far everyone I've
talked with about it was keen on the idea.

Perhaps I just surround myself with people who tell me what I want to
hear :)

Or (and this is what I hope) - there's a number of people happily
running gNS who dont feel the need to complain about it as it is. That
would be nice!
 
> > 1) Complete the work which is being done by gnewsense devs on the
> > community repository and add/maintain our libre packages there.
> 
> Not sure about this as a general concept, see my comment above.

Apart from anything else the 'community repo' will be a place for
testing ideas before inflicting it on the main distro. At the moment we
don't have a testing branch, so we don't have the luxury of breaking
stuff there.

> > 2) Discuss how to move forward using Waver Doganov's documentation,
> 
> Unimportant comment: My name is Yavor, not Waver.  I guess I managed
> to mangle my name while spell-checking the Emacs buffer where I was
> composing the message.  Slightly embarrassing :-P

I thought we had a new Doganov on the scene for a bit - lucky it was a
slipup ;)

> > better if all the process is inside a wiki (config.fsf.org?)
> 
> I write my documents in Texinfo, because of the power it gives to the
> reader, especially regarding searching, browsing and out-of-the-box
> output for printing.
> 
> I guess it would be trivial to convert it in some $wiki format, if
> desirable.
> 
> On a more general note, I'd like to defer this discussion until I'm
> ready to actually publish something.  Perhaps it would be worthwhile

Absolutely.

> if more knowledgeable people than me comment on the sketch, and point
> out evident weaknesses right away.

I suspect I'm not one of those people, but hopefully I can offer a
useful opinion.

> > 3) Start to apply what Waver Doganov has just proposed: switching
> > packages to the GNU alternative, one by one.
> 
> This was just one (albeit central) point of my plan, and it's not
> something to be taken lightly.

Definitely.
kk

-- 
Karl Goetz, (Kamping_Kaiser / VK5FOSS)
Debian contributor / gNewSense Maintainer
http://www.kgoetz.id.au
No, I won't join your social networking group

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