Subject: Re: [PATCH] gnu: Add ungoogled-chromium.

From: bill-auger <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2019 23:52:04 -0500

re: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2019-02/msg00009.html

i would like to remind readers of the guix-devel list that it was
discussed some months ago, why no FSDG distros currently distribute
chromium[1] - it appeared at that time, that most people in that
discussion were in agreement that chromium should not be included in
guix; and marius was instead hosting it in a private repo, as not to
taint the main guix repos with dubious software - has there been a
notable break-through since then?

what is the evidence for this claim that this guix package is "free
software only"? - what does "Marks beautiful computed-origin-method" do
toward that end? - if a procedure for liberating any chromium-derived
software has been discovered, this would be a marvelous accomplishment
and very good news indeed, of which people outside of the guix dev team
would also be interested to learn

if the guix team has discovered some new information or has concocted a
viable liberation recipe for chromium or any of it's offspring, then i
hope that, for the benefit of all fellow Fosstopians, someone would
present that information to the FSDG mailing list for review and
discussion - it would be extra neighborly if that happened *before*
offering this program to guix users, while fully knowing that the other
FSDG distros are still intentionally suppressing it in solidarity

again, i am totally indifferent as to whether anyone uses chromium or
not - my only interest in this is that i would like to strengthen the
FSDG by convincing FSDG distros to communicate and collaborate with each
other, and to achieve consensus about common issues such as this, that
clearly affect all distros equally; so that no one is compelled to ask
"why does guixsd endorse that popular program if other FSDG distros
reject it on principal?" - it is difficult enough to explain to users
why these programs are rejected in the first place; but at least the
way things are now, we can say that all FSDG distros are in agreement to
err on the conservative side until a satisfactory liberation procedure
is found and documented - currently, the documented liberation
procedure is: "Remove program/package. Use GNU IceCat, or
equivalent"[2] - if there is a better candidate procedure now, let us
get it onto the table for discussion

i would like to consider all FSDG distros as being part of a larger
federation, sharing the same primary goals; but we cant all be reading
all of the dev lists - let us communicate whenever applicable, in the
common venue that exists for that purpose[3] - i tried enticing the
folks on the guix team to do that previously - if there is indeed
something new to announce regarding chromium's dubious FSDG status,
please elect someone from guix to do so now - this would be very
interesting news to the readers of that list, and your effort and/or
accomplishment would be sincerely applauded - other FSDG distros would
be happy (and some quite eager) to re-instate any of these
chromium-derived packages if a consensus could be reached that any of
them could be distributed 100% freely; but if all distros are to decide
for themselves what is freely distributable and what is not, without
evidence and without discussing it with the other FSDG distros nor the
FSF, then the FSDG loses its teeth, and we all look wishy-washy and
flakey on that, the main, central FSDG concern: which programs are
freely distributable and which are not

[1]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2018-09/msg00264.html
[2]:
https://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines#chromium-browser
[3]: https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-linux-libre