[Nix-dev] Re: Separating free and non-free packages, again

[Nicolas Pierron]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 14:16, Tony White <tonywhite100 at googlemail.com> wrote:
> That's cool but I think that following the gnu guidelines and ideas of
> freedom strictly is how to get nixos classified as a gnu distribution
> like gnewsense is.
> It has to be strict if you guys want the classification. See here :
> http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
> and here for the pitfalls :
> http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html
> So if you want nixos added here :
> http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
> The non-free stuff has got to be forked away and hosted somewhere else
> and the kernel's firmware blobs need to be removed.
> (Put non-free nixpkgs on gitorious and move to git would be the best way IMO.)
>

from http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html :
> A free system distribution must not steer users towards obtaining any nonfree information for practical use, or encourage them to do so. *** There should be no repositories or ports for nonfree software. *** Programs in the system should not suggest installing nonfree plugins, documentation, and so on.

Even forking non-free packages seems to be refused by these guilde-lines.

For practical use I suggest to filter out all packages which does not
match the *** user defined *** license predicate.  Such predicate
avoid confusion of the freeness terms: free to use or 4 freedoms ?
This will avoid creating directories for each category, which is still
not admitted by the previous guide-lines and not maintainable.  In
addition this implies that you cannot install something which does not
respect your own license predicate.

-- 
Nicolas Pierron
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolasbpierron - http://nbp.name/
Donald Knuth - I can't go to a restaurant because I keep looking at
the fonts on the menu.