Re: [GNU-linux-libre] is this work-group still serving the community?

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org> writes:

> For projects like Guix for instance, it could probably be 
> improved by
> making sure that new contributors, especially people that never 
> heard
> of the FSDG before, do not miss that information.
>
> An example of that would be to make it really prominent in the
> instructions to contribute (if it's not done already) or in 
> other
> places where contributors would go, and try to explain it to 
> people
> that didn't really understand it in general, and if possible try 
> to
> convince them with good arguments that it's a good thing for 
> Guix.

The contributing manual does that.  See the section “Software 
Freedom”, which says this:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
@c Adapted from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html.
@cindex free software
The GNU operating system has been developed so that users can have
freedom in their computing.  GNU is @dfn{free software}, meaning 
that
users have the 
@url{https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html,four
essential freedoms}: to run the program, to study and change the 
program
in source code form, to redistribute exact copies, and to 
distribute
modified versions.  Packages found in the GNU distribution provide 
only
software that conveys these four freedoms.

In addition, the GNU distribution follow the
@url{https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html,free
software distribution guidelines}.  Among other things, these 
guidelines
reject non-free firmware, recommendations of non-free software, 
and
discuss ways to deal with trademarks and patents.

Some otherwise free upstream package sources contain a small and 
optional
subset that violates the above guidelines, for instance because 
this subset
is itself non-free code.  When that happens, the offending items 
are removed
with appropriate patches or code snippets in the @code{origin} 
form of the
package (@pxref{Defining Packages}).  This way, @code{guix
build --source} returns the ``freed'' source rather than the 
unmodified
upstream source.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

--
Ricardo