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   Vivien (gugurumbe@mastouille.fr)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 05:19:54 JST Vivien

   So, given that the official Guix survey presented the lack of nonfree software as a problem, and found that it was a problem, will the maintainers decide to allow non-free software? A little clarification would be most welcome.
   #guix

   • Embed this notice
     Ludovic Courtès (civodul@toot.aquilenet.fr)'s status on Monday, 27-Jan-2025 05:19:52 JST Ludovic Courtès

     in reply to

     @gugurumbe I wouldn’t say the survey presented lack of non-free software as a problem, but it’s true that it explicitly listed it as an option, particularly for drivers.

     I’m not a maintainer but I don’t expect nor desire a change in what Guix provides: it should all be free software, and it’s fine to have third-party channels providing non-free software.

     The question of non-free firmware could be discussed separately though, like it was in Debian.

   • Embed this notice
     Alfred M. Szmidt (amszmidt@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jan-2025 04:48:21 JST Alfred M. Szmidt

     in reply to

     @gugurumbe The GNU project does not consider the "lack of non-free software" a problem, and Guix is a GNU project.

     As such it is not for maintainers of Guix to decide such things, you can read about how the GNU project is structure at https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-structure.en.html .

   • Embed this notice
     Alfred M. Szmidt (amszmidt@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jan-2025 04:49:34 JST Alfred M. Szmidt

     in reply to

     • Giacomo Leidi

     @paulbutgold That would be against the policies of the GNU project, which GNU Guix follows.

     @gugurumbe

   • Embed this notice
     Giacomo Leidi (paulbutgold@mastodon.bida.im)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jan-2025 04:49:35 JST Giacomo Leidi

     in reply to

     @gugurumbe i'm not a maintainer but I don't think Guix mainline should ever contain proprietary software. I think the Guix project, while keeping its principles of having only free software in mainline, could make it easier to have images with nonfree drivers, since most users require them.

     We are not far imho, we just need some change in the installer to use the guix-for-channels procedure [0] for the final system and allow configuring third party substitute servers for the final system in the installer.

     [0]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/guix.html#Customizing-the-System_002dWide-Guix

   • Embed this notice
     Alfred M. Szmidt (amszmidt@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jan-2025 05:30:03 JST Alfred M. Szmidt

     in reply to

     • Giacomo Leidi

     @paulbutgold >The point is that right now it is not possible to install the nonguix channel and substitute server through the Guix installer.

     A good thing.

     > It is possible to build completely free software based distros outside of GNU.

     Could you name some? None of the BSDs are non-free, most of GNU/Linux systems are non-free. If we look at the https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html -- it is very short.

     @gugurumbe

   • Embed this notice
     Giacomo Leidi (paulbutgold@mastodon.bida.im)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Jan-2025 05:30:05 JST Giacomo Leidi

     in reply to

     • Alfred M. Szmidt

     @amszmidt @gugurumbe I didn't say the #Guix project should distribute such images. We are fine with #nonguix distributing them, as it has done for the past years. The point is that right now it is not possible to install the nonguix channel and substitute server through the Guix installer. The same goes for all third party channels such as guix-hpc or guix-science.

     Also, as far as I am concerned, Guix should leave the GNU project. It is possible to build completely free software based distros outside of GNU.