Re: [GNU-linux-libre] review of uruk

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

Hi,

On Fri, 24 Mar 2023 23:13:47 -0300
Alexandre Oliva <lxoliva@fsfla.org> wrote:
> - free distros need to take responsibility for what they recommend and
> offer to users, outsourcing that responsibility to third parties, even
> ones committed to observing the same rules, is a potential pitfall
> when an upstream distribution changes its own alignment.  A free
> distro must be able to fix freedom problems itself, without depending
> on a third party to do so.
> 
> - if an upstream distribution changes its alignment, the downstream
> distro may find itself needing to urgently find hosting for a sizable
> repository.  that creates a potential conflict of priorities.  it pays
> to work on that ahead of time.
> 
> - self hosting one's own computing and data sets a good example for
> the community at large.  the growing disregard for this aspect of
> computing autonomy in parts of the larger free software communities
> is a serious problem that drives a lot of people into behaviors that
> promote dependency rather than freedom.
> 
> There is likely a lot more, but these are ones that come to mind
> immediately.
All these issues also affect small distributions that don't have a
self-hosting requirement.

Let's call the distribution you build on (like Trisquel), the host
distribution, and the small distribution (like LibreCMC or Replicant)
the target distribution.

The issue here is that usually target distributions (like LibreCMC) can
be built on several host distributions, so people probably assume it's
always the case.

In practice this doesn't apply anymore for Replicant as it tend to be
really strict about the distribution it can be built on.

There are bigger issues though:
- When the host distribution version stops being maintained and that
  people find issues in it, it might be difficult to fix them if the
  target distribution doesn't start maintaining the host distribution.
- The host distribution repositories could disappear. For instance
  PureOS green disappeared. If someone has a copy of the repository I'd
  be extremely interested in it.

That could be fixed relatively easily though:
(1) The FSF or another organization/project could probably mirrors all
    of the FSDG compliant distributions and also keeps archives of the
    older versions of the distributions somehow.
(2) If there are new versions of the host distribution, it would still
    be possible to either contact the host project to keep maintaining
    the old version. If not it might be possible to fork it (especially
    if all the source code is mirrored already).

The only maintenance that is really required would probably be to
be able to get some bug reports on FSDG compliance issues and fix them.

Denis.

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