Archlinux and free software

jerryluc · 2008-05-22 20:50:28

I was just wondering about Arch policy on proprietary software? I really like Debians policy and GNUs philosophy in general.
I do believe in the open source development, and think it will out conquer closed software in the future.
So can i trust that if something in the official arch repo is not open source it will be marked, like "Macromedia standalone flash player (nonfree)"?

I'm quite new to linux and arch, but has really become an linux/arch fan. And would be interested in hearing what you "old timers" think of the matter?

Last edited by jerryluc (2008-05-22 20:51:05)

wonder · 2008-05-22 20:54:27

if you like debian policy why do you use archlinux? is to easy to use archlinux and you don't like it?:)

phrakture · 2008-05-22 21:08:50

Well, in general we try to side with "convenience". There is closed-sourced software in the repos, usually because it is better than the open source alternatives.

Currently we don't mark our software as non-free, but in the future when pacman categories are implemented, we will most likely use that.

I for one, don't care if software is closed or open. I use whatever is best. Technical merit, not philosophical merit, is how I like to roll.

catwell · 2008-05-22 21:10:26

I'm not sure that (nonfree) is always added in the description, but all packages are supposed to have a Licenses tag which is visible by pacman -Si package, so you can check.

jerryluc · 2008-05-22 21:12:21

if you like debian policy why do you use archlinux? is to easy to use archlinux and you don't like it?smile

that doesn't make any sense. I like arch, it was just the distro i was looking for when i was distro hopping. I'm just wondering about the policy and what others think of the matter.

Last edited by jerryluc (2008-05-22 21:13:41)

daf666 · 2008-05-22 21:18:20

I believe in using the right tool for the job, also marking only non-free software is silly.. it might be a better idea to add a "license" field to the database like in freshmeat.net.
FYI, the Arch Linux wallpapers I created were made in 3dsmax 30 day eval installed on MS W2k3 1/2 year eval in Virtualbox in Arch

jb · 2008-05-23 04:01:03

jerryluc wrote:

that doesn't make any sense. I like arch, it was just the distro i was looking for when i was distro hopping. I'm just wondering about the policy and what others think of the matter.

The short of it is there's plans kicking around for pacman to distinguish free from non-free at some point, but it's low priority because very few people here are dogmatic about avoiding non-free software.

Misfit138 · 2008-05-23 04:21:31

I agree with Phrak; technical merit over philosophical ideology.
GNU is more than a philosophy though, and I have the highest regard for the GNU toolchain. I always use the term GNU/Linux, because that's what it is- the linux kernel and the GNU toolchain. I do find the GPL a little bit strict at times, but I am not complaining.
Ideally, the nv driver would perform as well as the closed source nVidia, but I will not give up 3d performance for the sake of a philosophy.

wuischke · 2008-05-23 06:53:46

I prefer Open Source software over closed source, but that's not a political issue, but an issue of freedom. Although I don't use proprietary drivers unless my operating system's kernel is closed anyway.

Opera is my favourite browser, but I'm trying to get used to Firefox 3 again, because there's no native Opera for OpenBSD. (a matter of freedom, not philosophy)

Also, I prefer the BSD license over the GPL when writing software.

pogeymanz · 2008-05-23 14:46:56

I find some of the points here very interesting.

I think they should label free and non-free, though. What can it hurt? If one person wants to only use free stuff, then he/she can. And if someone only goes on technical merit, he/she can continue. Nobody loses.

Of course, I understand why it's a low priority, so I wont be offended if it doesn't happen for a long time.

Personally, I try to avoid close-source only because I see how fast open-source software grows and improves. (Windows vs. Linux, anybody?) But I'm not a zealot, either. If I have a real reason to used closed stuff, I will.

For example, I use Firefox over Opera even though I used to love Opera way more. But the practical difference is negligible for what I do.

But I used the Nvidia closed source driver, because the open one just doesn't work as well. Although I'm going to give it another try.

z0phi3l · 2008-05-23 18:01:12

^^ It hurts in that the Devs/TUs/etc don't have the time to add another field to a description to appease a tinny minority of users, now if there was a huge upwelling of requests for a differentiation, it would happen sooner than later as it is, it's a low priority because of the general attitude most of us have of "technical merit over philosophical ideology"

Allan · 2008-05-23 18:12:41

It is more the necessary changes to pacman/makepkg/dbscripts etc rather than adding another line to a PKGBUILD. But as with all feature requests that are at a low priority to the devs, patches are welcome!

peets · 2008-05-23 18:58:39

Technical merit and philosophical merit often go hand in hand. Both require reasoning.

The quest for quality software will generally also lead to free software.

Zealous free software advocates who don't think are a nuisance.

Zealous free software advocates who think ftw!

I like Arch's way of focusing on technical merit. Did you notice it feels like the most free distro around? The user has the power!

schivmeister · 2008-05-23 19:10:29

Actually this is exactly Linus' opinion - technical merit. I don't see the need for any other "line" or "remark" or "comment" in the PKGBUILD or somewhere since there is already a license array.

Davigetto · 2008-05-23 19:34:27

Well, lots of enterprises are releasing all their software as free (because is more, more efficient having all people correcting bugs than a close group correcting bugs that have been notified by users). It's a philosophical and practice question.

Take as an example the Linux Kernel. I don't know if it is true or false, but a language like C, not object oriented, and a whole community developing it, makes it harder and harder to be mantained (hold), because code becomes "chaotic". Linus Torvalds and some of their "hackers" every X time restructure all the code of kernel. It's needed some kind of organization.

Well, another example: Java. SUN has the code and libraries free, but all their business is located of hardware, services and consultancy. So... not take GNU as a paradise. It's good, yes, it is perfect for learning, practice, making your soul more human, giving to you the the opportunity to going to a disco and finish the night into a bed with a pretty woman cause you have told her that you are a free software programmer... But for some people is an opportunity of having a good business (intelligent men, right!).

Now we can have the other side. Close software. A group of 7 persons (an specifier, an analytic, 2 designers and 3 programmers, for example), people with past successful projects, maybe prefer to have their own organization.

Imagine that you are a developer and you make with your faculty partners a Restaurant program to manage clients, meals... and the project has popularity, so you want to follow developing it with your partners. Now you have to make up your mind and take a decision: Following with your teammates and no more? Making it Free software?

jerryluc · 2008-05-23 19:53:31

Imo GNU's great tool chain is a result of their philosophy. And therefore i think it's wrong to use closed software, since the software development would benefit if everybody used open source.

But, i agree that it's right to use closed source if needed. You can't just say: "ok, i just wait a few years and see if there are any open source solution to my problem then."

Now that I'm aware of the "license" line in pacman, i agree that it's not necessary to add (nonfree).

Is the job implementing it to pacman or research on witch packages that contains proprietary software? If it's the last on I'm happily contributing, but I don't think that my contribution to pacman development would benefit arch

phrakture · 2008-05-23 20:07:59

z0phi3l wrote:

^^ It hurts in that the Devs/TUs/etc don't have the time to add another field to a description to appease a tinny minority of users, now if there was a huge upwelling of requests for a differentiation, it would happen sooner than later as it is, it's a low priority because of the general attitude most of us have of "technical merit over philosophical ideology"

You're welcome to submit a patch based on ABS that changes this and I will integrate it. I have said this hundreds of times before: open source software, and anything else that is done by volunteers requires that the volunteer cares about what he is doing. I stated my opinion above: I simply don't care. If you care, then for god's sake contribute something to the community instead of expecting everyone else to do your work

FiremothPilot · 2008-06-11 17:14:15

pogeymanz wrote:

I think they should label free and non-free, though. What can it hurt? If one person wants to only use free stuff, then he/she can. And if someone only goes on technical merit, he/she can continue. Nobody loses.

This I think is the bottom line...

One of the things Linux is about is the freedom to choose, and that freedom should be facilitated in all distributions from Arch to Debian to Puppy.

I prefer to use F/OSS whenever possible, but practically I might never have a 100% Free system. I would however like to know when I'm about to install a non-free program versus a free one. It simply makes customization that much easier.

Garns · 2008-06-11 17:24:02

FiremothPilot wrote:

I would however like to know when I'm about to install a non-free program versus a free one. It simply makes customization that much easier.

A quick look at the license array in the PKGBUILD, should provide these information in most cases.

anykey · 2008-06-11 17:24:17

Feel free to "mark" non-free, but PLEASE don't segregate; a user willing to use flash should just be able to install flash without nagging messages about "non-free", without having to include non-free repos, and somesuch. My opinion is that Debian is way overblown with their policy (Iceweasel? Icedove? Oh PLEASE! the "debian-multimedia"-repo? what's that?), so I will support the "convenience" crowd.

As for marking, we already have the "license" field, it could be used to do such things.

Garns beat me to it :-)

Last edited by anykey (2008-06-11 17:24:48)

JeremyTheWicked · 2008-06-11 18:52:01

Exactly, I support anykey: the freedom should go to the users, not to the software. Otherwise we're headed for a software-communism.

Mimi · 2008-06-11 21:40:39

anykey wrote:

Iceweasel? Icedove?

Bon Echo?
I like the debian philosophy, it's good to know which packages are free and which not and to make a free decision you have to be informed.
Maybe we need something like "The Virtual Richard M. Stallman" (vrms) for Arch.

anykey · 2008-06-11 23:21:49

I wasn't against marking packages; debian segregates them out of the repos, even if users there want them.

Edit: some things in my post were not contributing to the discussion in any way.

Last edited by anykey (2008-06-11 23:47:43)

11010010110 · 2008-06-12 11:34:56

Its simpler to add a wrapper for pacman. This way we dont need any change to pacman or the repos and its the most KISS solution

The packages are allready marked. All we need to do is go check one by one the packages we are going to install

Add one of the following 2 lines to pacman.conf or another config file

ACCEPTED_LICENSE = "gpl gpl* lgpl bsd mit x11 cc-* proprietary_class_1 proprietary_class_2 proprietary_class_3 mpl pub"
UNACCEPTED_LICENSE = " "

The wrapper works in 3 stages

1 run pacman in pretend mode to get the list of packages

2 check them one by one with pacman -Sl and compare to the list

3 if all licenses are ok run pacman -S

The user installs this wrapper (lets call it fpacman) and uses it exactly same way as the pacman it wraps

fpacman -Syu

fpacman -S whatever

for the tasks where no checking licenses is required the wrapper will just run pacman

INCSlayer · 2008-06-12 11:46:10

Mimi wrote:

anykey wrote:
Iceweasel? Icedove?
Bon Echo?
I like the debian philosophy, it's good to know which packages are free and which not and to make a free decision you have to be informed.
Maybe we need something like "The Virtual Richard M. Stallman" (vrms) for Arch.

actually Bon Echo is mozillas name for any unbranded firefox if you compile firefox on windows without the brand it's also called bon echo
the difference is that debian actually goes in and rebrands them which requires extra work

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-22 20:50:28

Archlinux and free software

#2 2008-05-22 20:54:27

Re: Archlinux and free software

#3 2008-05-22 21:08:50

Re: Archlinux and free software

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