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

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2019 06:52:30 +0100

As always, I second Bill here. There is a lot of history behind the 
Chromium project that I think many of us are aware of. There, to my 
knowledge, remains to be a complete audit of the Chromium source. Such 
an audit is crucial for us to even know what is problematic and what is 
not when it comes to FSDG compliance. So, unless the ungoogled chromium 
project has done this audit successfully I remain a kind skeptic.

On 04.02.2019 05:52, bill-auger wrote:
> 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