Subject: [bug#71697] [PATCH v3 2/2] scripts: lint: Honor package property to exclude checkers.

From: Greg Hogan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 12:38:26 -0400

On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 3:28 PM Maxim Cournoyer
<[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> I don't think these exclusions should be committed in general to the
> repo, except when we have for example the author of some software
> explicitly requesting that SWH archival be disabled for it in Guix.

Author requests are as problematic to a free software distribution as
the earlier demands to modify historical data are to reproducibility.

How do we authenticate authorship? Is it a single author, all authors,
majority of authorship? How would the latter be measured and valued?
Are author requests transitive? In which direction? Do the requests
propagate to dependent packages, or must a request include author
approval from all project dependencies? How do we handle cases where
copyright has not been noted as carefully as in Guix? Must the request
be made specifically to the Guix project? How do we monitor projects
for new authors or changes to requests?

We have a system for honoring author requests that resolves every
single one of these issues: software licenses. And this is not some
new issue, developers have been debating commercial use ("Micro$oft")
of their work for decades, yet here we are writing free software and
building a free Gnu/OS.

These requests to turn free software non-free are simply the tip of
the iceberg. We have always considered the artist (author) to be
separate from the art (licensed software). Now we get (from the
initiator of these demands) that "Not every political opinion should
be respected." which is a clear contradiction of the Guix Code of
Conduct's "Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and
experiences". Which individuals or demographic subgroups will be next
claimed problematic and need to have their contributions excluded?

> It may also be useful e.g. for some project that really don't have a
> home page, to avoid a spurious lint warning in this case.

If this is the best use case for a spurious feature request then I
find this a dangerous addition to the project. Those denigrading and
demanding that Guix pressure partner projects to restrict the use of
free software are unlikely to be content adding these flags to their
private packages as may exist.