[Dev] [Votation] Package freedom guidelines, what to do next

[Michał Masłowski]

Hello.  We have discussed some changes in the thread of [0], this
message lists what we could do to implement them.

Please vote and comment on the draft guidelines, they need some
improvements.

[0] https://lists.parabolagnulinux.org/pipermail/dev/2012-November/000974.html

Package freedom guidelines wiki page draft
==========================================

These guidelines document our interpretation of what software should not
be included in the distribution according to the
[[Parabola/GNU_Linux_Social_Contract]] and how the included software
should be provided.

Not all software that complies with these guidelines should be included
in Parabola.  Good reasons for inclusion are the package being included
in Arch or being useful for you.

== All nontrivial works in binary packages are free software, free
cultural works or GNU FDL-licensed documentation ==

All nontrivial non-license works should be
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html free software] or
[http://freedomdefined.org/Definition free cultural works] unless they
are correctly GNU FDL-licensed documentation ("correctly" implies that
e.g. a manual that consists only of invariant sections isn't accepted).

== PKGBUILDs do not fetch nonfree sources ==

Use SRCBUILDs to make free source archives.  Do not remove nonfree files
in <code>build()</code>, removing recommendation of nonfree software is
acceptable.

== PKGBUILD repositories are free ==

Do not include patches containing nontrivial nonfree files (use
<code>rm</code> in SRCBUILDs to remove them).

== Incompatible PKGBUILDs/source packages are blacklisted ==

No included PKGBUILD should provide a package incompatible with these
guidelines.  Some in non-current revisions of the repositories might do
this, these revisions are known to be unsupported and not recommended
for use.

All blacklist changes are discussed on the
dev at lists.parabolagnulinux.org list before being committed.  Unless it's
obvious (not only for the original reporter) that the package won't be
free, an issue report should be left open for it until the problem is
fixed and the package is unblacklisted or it's known that no useful free
work can be based on parts of the package.

== Sources for all packages are provided by the repo server ==

Having only the PKGBUILD repositories, all binary packages, a source
archive downloaded from the server and no network access it should be
possible to build practically the same binary package as provided by
us.

Issues to decide
================

- building packages from sources

  I don't want to change this in TeXLive-related packages, they often
  just provide binaries and difficult to build sources for
  non-arch-specific things.

- the FDL exception

  Is there a better way to express our support for free culture without
  including too many nonfree works?

  Are there non-FDL-licensed nonfree works that we want to include?

  Or maybe instead we should have an exception for GNU packages?  GNU
  Emacs includes many separate nonfree works of opinion.  Most nonfree
  FDL manuals that I know about are of GNU packages with GNU cover texts
  making them nonfree.

- recommend SRCBUILDs or another similar solution?

- rewrite histories of our PKGBUILD repositories to not include nonfree files

Blacklist of source packages
============================

The aim is to rewrite blacklist.txt to list source packages and have the
binary packages to remove automatically found by dbscripts.

- write scripts for two-side conversion; should PKGBUILDs be sourced on
  repo (potential security issues)?

- verify that bin-to-source < blacklist.txt | source-to-bin gives the
  same file: blacklist more packages, write more replacements

- run bin-to-source on the blacklist and commit it

- change all wiki pages mentioning it

- close relevant bugs if there are any

We could do the recfile blacklist rewrite after this change is done.

Deprecate rePKGBUILD
====================

Remove their mentions from the wiki, remove the scripts from libretools
if no one has non-Parabola uses for them.

Check all libre packages for nonfree software in abslibre or sources
====================================================================

They already remove it from binary packages, so this should be easy to
check.

Make sources of all packages available
======================================

- have a script fetching them with errors posted to the list

- check the completeness of sources listed on repo

- have scripts to fetch these sources from repo instead of ones listed
  in PKGBUILDs

Report and fix related bugs
===========================

I'll report and implement some of features needed for these changes
if you support it.

I'll consider the voting and discussion finished not before 2013/01/07.
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