Subject: [bug#52109] [PATCH] gnu: Add unrar-free.

From: Liliana Marie Prikler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2023 21:29:09 +0100

Am Donnerstag, dem 12.01.2023 um 08:36 +0100 schrieb Giovanni Biscuolo:
> Hello everybody,
> 
> Liliana Marie Prikler <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> > Am Mittwoch, dem 11.01.2023 um 23:31 +0100 schrieb zimoun:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > > I agree with Maxim’s arguments.  From my point of view, unrar-
> > > free respects FSDG – and since it is present in Trisquel, I
> > > assume this understanding of FSDG is shared – to some extent.
> 
> I also agree with _both_ Maxim arguments:
> 
> 1. unrar-free is FSDG compliant, and I cannot see how this can be
> defined "point of view" :-)
> 
> 2. 'unrar-free' potentially steering users toward 'unrar' (non-free)
> cannot be used as an argument to refuse 'unrar-free' inclusion in
> Guix
> 
> Liliana please reply to this two specific points, in particular
> please tell us if you judge 'unrar-free' not to be FSDG compliant
I already explained this in [1] but TL;DR, while it might be argued
that it follows the letter of the FSDG, my personal opinion is that it
does not follow the spirit. 

> > > Even, I would say the Liliana’s opposite argument: it liberates
> > > user from the non-free unrar by offering a free alternative.  And
> > > it is the case for all the free re-implementations, no?
> > From my point of view, it really doesn't.
> 
> [...]
> 
> > But as it stands right now, I see it as little more than a piece of
> > software that makes people go "but how do I get the _real_ unrar?",
> 
> (I don't understand "cue people": is it a misprint?)
Cue is a verb, which roughly means "to signal" or "to provoke" [2].

> I'd say that all liberated versions of non-free software could make
> people go "how do I get the _real_ one", no?  For example Guix
> distributed browsers are lacking EME implementation (no DRM loading)
> and some other non-free "extensions" giving problems to users trying
> to use certain web services; we have ungoogled-chromium and I know
> people asking "how do I get the real Chrome"?
ungoogled-chromium is a bad example imho, because it's two steps
removed from Chrome.  For one, there is the Chromium-Chrome split,
where the former prides itself on removing some of the Google cruft and
then you have ungoogled chromium on top of those patches to remove even
more cruft.

> > cue people sending each other advice on a certain channel dedicated
> > to non-free software.
> 
> So, if I understand your last point, the problem you see is that
> "unrar-free" (alone?) steers people to send each other advice on
> channels including non-free software: 
Perhaps not alone, you do need to also find one of those rar files that
can't be opened by libarchive, which are not that hard to come by.*

Now, I hope I'm not exaggerating when I say that most computer users
use libarchive-based (un)archiving tools already. [3]
Having observed this, I see little meaning in having a frontend, which
per its name promises to open archives that their existing tooling
can't handle, only to then reveal that it was the existing tooling all
along.  If it didn't have the name that suggested it was able to do
that, no one would expect it to, and upon encountering an archive that
libarchive can't handle, they could go "well, fuck those rar guys, I
have better things to do", or they could try and figure out what's
wrong and contribute a fix (not that a fix is easily contributed given
the nature of this bug, but somewhere along their journey they'd notice
that rar is proprietary garbage and not fault libarchive too hard for
not handling it).  Because unrar-free does have a name that suggests
it's able to unrar those things, however, they will inevitably feel
wronged no matter what and rather think "well, fuck unrar-free, I want
unrar-nonfree".

The above feels like a very basic HCI thing to me, I wonder why it
takes like five mails to get across.

> could this be a reason not to include a FSDG compliant software in
> Guix?
A free system distribution must not steer users towards obtaining any
nonfree information for practical use, or encourage them to do so. [4]

Cheers

* Admittedly, you still have to make use of nonfree software to create
such archives, but you'd also need them to create "normal" rar archives
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[1] [email-masked]
[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cue#Verb
[3] https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki/LibarchiveUsers
[4]
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html