[GNU-linux-libre] incomplete distros

[bill-auger]

i know this is a bad time to propose anything new; but "hear" me
out on this

imagine that we formally relax the "complete distro" criteria to
accept what are commonly referred to as "spins"; and a new
'foo-spin' distro, which is based upon an already endorsed
complete distro: 'foo', is accepted on those relaxed terms

spin distros are relatively easy to make and are very common -
many distribute nothing more than a re-branded ISO - uruk has
clearly done more than that bare minimum; but by relaxing the
"complete distro" criteria to only the basic "it needs to be
able to compile itself" sense, those "bare minimum effort" spins
too, would need to be acceptable (those are commonly referred to
as "vanity distros") - maybe the problem with that is not
obvious, so i will explain - i thought about this quite a bit
this week

imagine now, that the maintainers or users of 'foo-spin', or the
FSDG work-group, decide that some software distributed by 'foo'
is unfit (let's call it 'dubi-app') - the 'foo-spin' maintainers
have only one option to address the freedom bug - it is the
'foo' maintainers, who are actually responsible and accountable
for the FSDG-fitness status of 'foo-spin' - that does not seem
right to me

of course i may concede, as gnutoo may suggest, that is OK,
because we could get the problem addressed in 'foo'; but what if
the 'foo' maintainers refuse to comply? - with the lack of
authority problem that we have now, it makes the FSDG-fitness
status of 'foo-spin' contingent on the 'foo' maintainers
interpretation of the FSDG - in that scenario, the 'foo'
maintainers have more authority over 'foo-spin' than the FSDG
work-group, or the 'foo-spin' maintainers do - again, that does
not seem right to me

that is something of a conundrum currently - who is responsible
and accountable for freedom bugs in 'foo-spin'? - should not we
expect that to be the 'foo-spin' maintainers, and them alone?

this may not be an obvious problem currently; but imagine that
the proposal was accepted, to hand-over authority to the FSDG
work-group - part of that proposal was to give a vote to a
representative of each distro - at first, this may seem like a
good idea - perhaps the 'foo-spin' maintainers could leverage
their vote to force 'foo' to comply with the majority - but that
is actually a very bad idea - it opens the potential for "gaming
the system" easily

to demonstrate, imagine that previous scenario played out; and
the decision greatly annoyed the 'foo' maintainers - they love
'dubi-app' and miss it dearly - they could hatch-up a plan for
each 'foo' maintainer (and perhaps a number of users too) to
spin up a vanity fork and apply for FSDG endorsement - those
distros would be very easy to endorse, because they are really
nothing but re-branded ISOs plus the already endorsed 'foo' - in
that scenario, the 'foo' maintainers (in disguise as separate
distros) could easily assume majority control over all other
distros, thwarting the otherwise democratic process

not to suggest that anything like that would actually happen;
but it is the intuition we should have, regarding what qualifies
as a "complete distro" - that should entail hosting complete
repos independently from any other project, and therefore being
responsible for it's maintenance and FSDG-fitness and most
importantly: being _able_ to do so - in the "coup" scenario
above, a strict "complete distro" criteria would at least be a
deterrent; as it would significantly raise the cost of
maintaining the 'foo' distro (and its subversive spins)

so, i came up with an alternative proposal - if we want to
accept "incomplete distros", let us do so with that distinction,
formally - in that way, the evaluation would only need to
address the software which the incomplete distro actually
maintains themselves - if ever distros were given a vote,
incomplete distros would be excluded, as having insufficient
stake in the outcome

WDYT?