Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

* Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> [2021-01-06 23:36]:
> > Who I am, or how I am is not subject of this. I do need to conform to
> > yours or anybody's standards or classes of society. 
> Ok. Fair enough; as long as you don't demand other people to live up to
> your standards. I am affraid by stigmatizing people for running some
> software you are actually indirectly demanding them to live up to your
> standards. (btw - I think you ment "I do not need ..." :-))

I am sending this to Emacs tangents, as I do not think it is related
to package repology.el

Every free software out there tells people something about liberty. It
does not demand people to accept it. It teaches people and let them
make their own choices.

For many free software users there is no alternative, so that is the
only standard in the sense you mention it. If it cannot be reached
easily it may be reached step by step.

> I am not promoting non-free software, but I am very pragmatic person. As
> a curiosa, about me, I even went in a political party to promote
> actually free software; because I thought we could save A LOTS of
> taxpayers money in the long run, and could make the world a better place
> if we invested in free software isntead of sending money out of the
> contrey to Microsoft or Apple or other big tech Co:s.

Great. And yet, free software is not money related. Example is NASA
and US government that pays much money to produce free software. It is
liberty related, not money. Producing free software may cost just
equally as producing proprietary, I do not see difference
there. Somebody does have to put their efforts, money, time, to
program free software.

The difference with expenses comes with liberty to distribute it
without paying new license fees.

> However dogmaticism and stigmaticism has never proven to be useful in
> the long run. On contrary it is unproductive and potentially harmful. It
> holds for every aspect of human life.

I see nothing dogmatic neigher stigmatic about free software
philosophy and so I cannot relate to those statements. And I cannot
comprehend what you mean with "unproductive" and "potentially
harmful".

Maybe your statement is not related to free software, but if it is, I
do not hold opinion that it is unproductive and potentially harmful,
neither that promotion of free software is such.

There is no general rule "for every aspect of human life" and if there
would be one to discuss, maybe on some other mailing list or privately.

> As a curiosa, I wonder what do you think, how much of medical software
> that powers life-holding machines in hospitals is *Free*?

Majority is probably proprietary. Terrible condition.

> Should we erase all those chips and hardrives?

We as a group of people on Emacs Devel mailing list, or who as "we"? I
have no idea what you think with "we". This is maybe because I speak
practically, always with practical ideas in mind. So I cannot relate
to it.

I can say that in Tanzania I have been promoting GNU Health, but it
did not reach right people yet. We will reach. I can also say that
practically and personally I have offered GNU Health and other
hospital/privacy management software to those pharmacies I have
personally met, they are very interested in adoption and we are still
in conversation.

So, in general terms, I think practically on how to change what I can
change. That is not a demand, that is enlightenment about free
software and helping people to switch.

> What do you think about *that* unethical software?

If proprietary software is used in health industry it is highly unethical.

> Do we have alternative?

There is no alternative to freedom.

Alternative
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Alternative

> I really wish nobody ever gets into a respiratory machine, but those
> that end up there are probably thankful for whatever software runs
> it.

That is general statement. Generally answered, the opposite can be as
well said, I would not like to be put on a machine where nobody was
able to inspect the source code, verify it for safety and eventually
improve it, or include collaborators to include it.

Terrible idea. 

> Is it unethical to not jump in a lake and save a drowbing persons
> life if you can't swim?

That is so much tangent, hypothetical question that is not related to
free software. In my opinion ethics is personal issue, moral is social
issue. For me personally, if I could save somebody, I would jump or
call other people to jointly help. If I cannot swim, I would say it
would be unethical to try to save such person.

All that is not related to the subject.

> Pesonally, I wish we had only free software in this world; but until we
> have, I am affraid a people in that circumstance are thankful to have
> whatever there is.

I can say I am not thankful as I find proprietary software abusive,
coercive, controlling, so I cannot be thankful for that.

Jean

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

* Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> [2021-01-07 13:56]:
> >>>>> On Thu, 07 Jan 2021, Richard Stallman wrote:
> 
> > I see two ways we could possibly manage to use repology.org in the
> > Free World.
> 
> > * Find a way to distinguish free from nonfree packages.  I see two
> > ideas One is to snarf the lists of free packages from Debian and
> > Parabola.  Another is to see if free packages list a license that
> > shows they are free.  You might have other ideas.
> 
> > * Ask the developer of repology.org to work with us to indicate which
> > packages are free, maybe even provide a way to specify "show me only
> > free packages".
> 
> One would first have to define what qualifies as a free package, and the
> world isn't all black-or-white there.

I am sending it to emacs-tangents.

> For example, the tarball of org-mode as released by upstream [1]
> contains Relax-NG schemas [2] distributed under a license that doesn't
> allow modification. Does that make org-mode a non-free package?

Schema may not be software. I do not know what it is. I cannot find it
in my etc/ in Org distribution under ~/.emacs.d/elpa/org-2.....

I have downloaded the package, so I found it in tar.gz and I have not
researched it enough. It may not be software, it looks to me as not
being software. Maybe it is standard.

If you think that the file does not make Org package free, then raise
the bug issue for Org mode.

> The way we handle this in Gentoo is not to install these non-free
> components by default. Users however have the option to enable their
> installation if they do two things: a) set a so-called USE flag, and
> b) explicitly accept these components' license.

I understand. I find it unfortunate that so many GNU/Linux
distributions decided to include proprietary software.

While I do not mind who uses which OS distribution, here I am
referencing why GNU project is not endorsing such distributions:
https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html

You may see there that Gentoo includes installation recipes for a
number of nonfree programs in its primary package system.

So if the OS distribution asks you to accept USE flag and explicitly
accept these component's licenses, it is promoting proprietary
software. It may be coercive. If it asks user to accept or otherwise,
that is coercion and not an option.

> Another example is the intlfonts package [3], which contains some
> Tibetan fonts with a non-commercial restriction. Again, Gentoo handles
> this with a USE flag, so users have to explicitly ask for installation
> of these non-free fonts.

Then please raise the bug issue. I myself do not have enough
information on who is doing what there. If you know, raise the issue.

> There are many more packages like that, and I don't believe that one
> could simply divide them into free and non-free by just taking the
> package name. It will depend on what the distro does when installing
> them or creating a binary package from them.

In relation to repology.org, it is index of many various
repositories from many various OS-es. Many repositories will not or
may not have license entry in their package description. So it is a
huge mess of software without distinction if it is free software or
not.

That proprietary software packages do exist, it is known, and you can
also see that hyperlink why GNU project is not endorsing many
distributions.

There are many proprietary software packages, starting with the
Debian's non-free repository and many others.

But those packages are not subject of research by GNU project, unless
some software shall be produced to give solution to most popular
proprietary software. GNU project creates and supports free
software. So those other software pieces that are not free are beyond
the subject of discussion in GNU project.

I hope you understand that. I do not mind who personally uses what
software, as that is beyond myself nor GNU to tell anybody.

Jean

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

[-> to emacs-tangents -- hopefully spelling that right this time]

   One would first have to define what qualifies as a free package, and the
   world isn't all black-or-white there.

There is no need to do that, we already have such a definition for
what is free software; see www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html .

What the case is for non-software, say documentation, or fonts, is
different matter and depends on what one is talking about.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > The GNU project doesn't want to give non-free software the remote
   > changes of success, so mentioning or linking to it unless it is
   > very well known would be working against its own goals.

   So you are basically saying that no GNU package can ever help me
   find out information about potentially non-free software?

Why should a GNU project ever give any legitimacy to a (specifically,
unknown) non-free software program?  E.g., by listing information
about it or linking to it.

   You are in effect saying that no GNU package can ever help me with
   these tasks, except if I'm looking for info about a Free Software
   package, because divulging any information about a non-free package
   means "promoting" it?  That is a very strange and radical
   interpretation of "promotion", one that hurts our own cause by
   preventing me from quickly and reliably answering the above basic
   questions about any software package I ever come across.

I never used the word promote or promotion -- I'm actually avoiding it
since I think it is prone to misinterpretation.  But if we (GNU) link
to a non-free software program, we are giving that program legitimacy
to exist and effectivly saying that it is fine.

Finding various non-free programs one is already able to do, but it
isn't the task of the GNU project or a specific GNU project to make it
easier.  So I think yes, it would be strange for the GNU project, or
specific GNU projects to make it easy to find information about
non-free software -- even with big Caveat Emptor warning..

   I see no problem here, either: repology.org doesn't promote or
   legitimize any of the packages whose information it records.

It does so by listing (describing) them; that legitimizes the non-free
programs.

   Maybe we should continue this discussion on another, more suitable
   GNU list.

When I remeber, I try to replace emacs-devel@ -- but sometimes one
forgets.  I've replaced emacs-devel@ with emacs-tangents@; maybe some
other list might be more appropriate?

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 07.01.2021 20:18, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> You are exagerating.  Nobody is saying don't do research, I'm quite
> sure you are capable of finding that information on your own.  But it
> is a different thing for GNU do provide that information for you.

But GNU software shouldn't help me in research?

> Compare it to listing weapons on a web page by an organization that is
> trying to get them removed from the streets...

Bad comparison. Please refer to the first paragraph of the email you 
were replying to.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
> Cc: bugs@gnu.support, arthur.miller@live.com, rms@gnu.org,
> 	dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2021 13:18:35 -0500
> 
>    > The GNU project doesn't want to give non-free software the remote
>    > changes of success, so mentioning or linking to it unless it is
>    > very well known would be working against its own goals.
> 
>    So you are basically saying that no GNU package can ever help me
>    find out information about potentially non-free software?
> 
> Why should a GNU project ever give any legitimacy to a (specifically,
> unknown) non-free software program?  E.g., by listing information
> about it or linking to it.

I explained why.  You elided that.  I guess you are unwilling to
engage in a serious discussion of a practical problem.  Oh well.

>    I see no problem here, either: repology.org doesn't promote or
>    legitimize any of the packages whose information it records.
> 
> It does so by listing (describing) them; that legitimizes the non-free
> programs.

You are saying those programs are breaking the law?

>    Maybe we should continue this discussion on another, more suitable
>    GNU list.
> 
> When I remeber, I try to replace emacs-devel@ -- but sometimes one
> forgets.  I've replaced emacs-devel@ with emacs-tangents@; maybe some
> other list might be more appropriate?

I see no reason to continue, since you basically ignore all the
substance.  I presented a practical problem, and you instead chose to
respond on an abstract philosophical level.  Sorry, not interested.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Thu, 07 Jan 2021, Jean Louis wrote:

> * Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> [2021-01-07 13:56]:
>> The way we handle this in Gentoo is not to install these non-free
>> components by default. Users however have the option to enable their
>> installation if they do two things: a) set a so-called USE flag, and
>> b) explicitly accept these components' license.

> I understand. I find it unfortunate that so many GNU/Linux
> distributions decided to include proprietary software.

> While I do not mind who uses which OS distribution, here I am
> referencing why GNU project is not endorsing such distributions:
> https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html

> You may see there that Gentoo includes installation recipes for a
> number of nonfree programs in its primary package system.

We include ebuilds for those packages that we believe to be useful
for our users. By default, installation of any non-free packages
(or components of packages) is disabled.

Gentoo is about choice, and has always leaned a little on the pragmatic
side. If we would (for example) exclude all non-free Linux firmware,
then I am certain that in order to have a usable system, most users
would choose to install such firmware nevertheless, bypassing the
package manager. Again, our default there is to install only free
firmware, but we leave users the choice to install additional blobs when
they explicitly ask for it.

> So if the OS distribution asks you to accept USE flag and explicitly
> accept these component's licenses, it is promoting proprietary
> software. It may be coercive. If it asks user to accept or otherwise,
> that is coercion and not an option.

The Gentoo package manager doesn't ask for anything. In its default
configuration as shipped with our install media, it will simply refuse
to install any non-free package. In order to override this, the user
will have to update the configuration files for that package and its
license.

>> Another example is the intlfonts package [3], which contains some
>> Tibetan fonts with a non-commercial restriction. Again, Gentoo handles
>> this with a USE flag, so users have to explicitly ask for installation
>> of these non-free fonts.

> Then please raise the bug issue. I myself do not have enough
> information on who is doing what there. If you know, raise the issue.

As a matter of fact, I had reported this in 2019 to the maintainer
listed at https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Intlfonts#tab=Details but
nothing has happened since then. Even worse, the directory lists the
package as GPLv2orlater (and it says verified in 2001) while AFAICS it
doesn't contain a single GPL licensed file.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2021-01-07 17:38]:
> > Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2021 11:15:16 +0300
> > From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> > Cc: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>, arthur.miller@live.com,
> >   rms@gnu.org, ams@gnu.org, dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org,
> >   emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > 
> > To promote means to contribute to the progress or growth of, in one
> > definition, and in other it means to make publicity for
> > something.
> 
> repology.org does neither of these.  It provides basic information
> about each package, and doesn't state any opinion on them, FAICT.  It
> lets you judge that.  That's neither promotion nor advancement nor
> publicity, in any reasonable sense of these words relevant to this
> discussion.

I am somehow surprised how you do not see that. Maybe you understand
something different under promotion, I just got a feeling that you
understand it as something paid for to be promoted. Even if that is
the case, somebody does pay for the website, server and all efforts to
get repology.org promoted, and repology.org promotes majority of
software packages.

GNU ELPA offers listings of packages, it promotes those
packages. MELPA offers listings of packages, thus promotes them. 

If I put a single page on a website, and say anything, whatever
subject of that is a promotion. As I contribute to the progress or
growth of specific subject.

Software repository is promotion of software. Repository package
descriptions are promotion of software.

The Wiktionary describes it as "dissemination of information in order
to increase its popularity" in the context of what we speak of:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/promotion#Etymology

Let us say I am hobbiest who likes carneval masks, if I just put a
picture on a website I am promoting it. I need not sell it. But I will
put efforts to support growth of popularity of carneval masks as I
also like it.

> You are entitled to your views, but here we discuss what Emacs as a
> project should do.  That cannot be based on your or mine personal
> views.

Of course yes. I look at it only from GNU as free software project and
if it is aligned to GNU purposes. I did not even know that reference
to such already exists in GNU coding standards.

In general I am surprised that some people like or wish to get access
to descriptions of non-free software packages through GNU ELPA. Why
don't they put it in MELPA and be satisfied right there?

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2021 22:38:15 +0300
> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> Cc: arthur.miller@live.com, rms@gnu.org, ams@gnu.org,
>   dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> 
> Software repository is promotion of software.

repostory.org is not a repository of software.  It is a list of
software.

> Repository package descriptions are promotion of software.
> 
> The Wiktionary describes it as "dissemination of information in order
> to increase its popularity" in the context of what we speak of:

Where do you see the "in order to increase its popularity" part?  That
would mean to say something about the non-free packages that would
represent them as beneficial or better than others or worthy of
installing and using.  I see none of that.

Just saying that a package exists and showing where its repository is
etc. is nowhere near promotion, it's simply information.

> In general I am surprised that some people like or wish to get access
> to descriptions of non-free software packages through GNU ELPA.

GNU ELPA is not the issue here.  The issue here is total rejection of
software that dares to provide information about software packages
which might not be Free Software.  I explained why finding such
information is important to me in my role as a GNU maintainer.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

* Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> [2021-01-07 22:38]:
> Gentoo is about choice, and has always leaned a little on the pragmatic
> side. If we would (for example) exclude all non-free Linux firmware,
> then I am certain that in order to have a usable system, most users
> would choose to install such firmware nevertheless, bypassing the
> package manager. Again, our default there is to install only free
> firmware, but we leave users the choice to install additional blobs when
> they explicitly ask for it.

Then maybe that is how users are trained or indoctrinated into Gentoo
as managers or maintainers of Gentoo did not teach users about free
software. I am sorry for that. That is why Gentoo will not be endorsed
by GNU project.

I am using mostly Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre now and I have no problems
installing it on plethora of computers. I may use Trisquel or other
FSF endorsed fully free GNU/Linux distribution. Not that I use any
firmware and it is true that maybe some wireless chip does not work,
but hey, it does not matter as we all have Internet here. I have
connected Internet by mobile phone and USB tethering method to one
computer that serves as router to switch that connects other
computers. It works well in a team.

> > Then please raise the bug issue. I myself do not have enough
> > information on who is doing what there. If you know, raise the issue.
> 
> As a matter of fact, I had reported this in 2019 to the maintainer
> listed at https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Intlfonts#tab=Details but
> nothing has happened since then. Even worse, the directory lists the
> package as GPLv2orlater (and it says verified in 2001) while AFAICS it
> doesn't contain a single GPL licensed file.

How about nudging again?

Jean

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2021-01-07 23:01]:
> > Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2021 22:38:15 +0300
> > From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> > Cc: arthur.miller@live.com, rms@gnu.org, ams@gnu.org,
> >   dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> > 
> > Software repository is promotion of software.
> 
> repostory.org is not a repository of software.  It is a list of
> software.

Maybe you meant repology.org is not a repository. Sure. But I meant
that true repository such as Debian's or Trisquel's repository is
promotion.

On the other hand when one server provides directory of hyperlinks, it
may not be repository but it is index or directory and search engine
in same time that points to software. In particular I can find
hyperlinks from repology.org

Like here:
https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/www-client/opera

I can find hyperlinks to Opera website

> > Repository package descriptions are promotion of software.
> > 
> > The Wiktionary describes it as "dissemination of information in order
> > to increase its popularity" in the context of what we speak of:
> 
> Where do you see the "in order to increase its popularity" part?  That
> would mean to say something about the non-free packages that would
> represent them as beneficial or better than others or worthy of
> installing and using.  I see none of that.

I see that repology.org does not make any distinction and it cannot do
that easily technically. So it does not make neither free software nor
proprietary better or worse by any reasons. And that is the problem.

> > In general I am surprised that some people like or wish to get access
> > to descriptions of non-free software packages through GNU ELPA.
> 
> GNU ELPA is not the issue here.  The issue here is total rejection of
> software that dares to provide information about software packages
> which might not be Free Software.  I explained why finding such
> information is important to me in my role as a GNU maintainer.

I am only talking about GNU ELPA and if repology.org should be in GNU
ELPA as that way we would influence millions of people by giving them
references to non-free software. It would speak badly of GNU project.

But that you use the package yourself, that is freedom of choice.

Jean

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 07.01.2021 22:16, Jean Louis wrote:
>> Again, it's not a software directory.
>>
>> It's primary use case is when you*search*  for some package and then see the
>> available versions, where they are distributed, and who maintains them.
>>
>> As such, the necessary knowledge about the user is "the user searched for
>> this package name".
> When clicking on this page:
> https://repology.org/projects/
> 
> It shows all packages from A-Z making it software directory by
> definition here:https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/directory

They're just showing their data in all arrangements they could come up 
with. It's not a significant use case, compared to others.

> repology.el package probbaly provides only access to searches within
> the full database.

And yet, you still argue that it is doing something wrong, somehow.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2021 23:31:47 +0300
> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> Cc: arthur.miller@live.com, rms@gnu.org, ams@gnu.org,
>   dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> 
> > Where do you see the "in order to increase its popularity" part?  That
> > would mean to say something about the non-free packages that would
> > represent them as beneficial or better than others or worthy of
> > installing and using.  I see none of that.
> 
> I see that repology.org does not make any distinction and it cannot do
> that easily technically. So it does not make neither free software nor
> proprietary better or worse by any reasons. And that is the problem.

How is it a problem? where's the promotion, please?

> > GNU ELPA is not the issue here.  The issue here is total rejection of
> > software that dares to provide information about software packages
> > which might not be Free Software.  I explained why finding such
> > information is important to me in my role as a GNU maintainer.
> 
> I am only talking about GNU ELPA and if repology.org should be in GNU
> ELPA as that way we would influence millions of people by giving them
> references to non-free software. It would speak badly of GNU project.
> 
> But that you use the package yourself, that is freedom of choice.

But that's immoral, isn't it?  If some other maintainer asks me how to
do this job, I cannot tell him or her about repology.org, can I?  If I
do, Jean Louis will pounce on me and say that it's against GNU
policies, right?

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

* Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> [2021-01-07 23:35]:
> On 07.01.2021 22:16, Jean Louis wrote:
> > > Again, it's not a software directory.
> > > 
> > > It's primary use case is when you*search*  for some package and then see the
> > > available versions, where they are distributed, and who maintains them.
> > > 
> > > As such, the necessary knowledge about the user is "the user searched for
> > > this package name".
> > When clicking on this page:
> > https://repology.org/projects/
> > 
> > It shows all packages from A-Z making it software directory by
> > definition here:https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/directory
> 
> They're just showing their data in all arrangements they could come up with.
> It's not a significant use case, compared to others.

Sure. I have seen it. I do not know why it matters if it is directory
or not, index, catalogue, search engine, database, call it as you wish.

> > repology.el package probbaly provides only access to searches within
> > the full database.
> 
> And yet, you still argue that it is doing something wrong, somehow.

I never said that, neither I have argued about what repology.org is
doing neither judged the website.

I have argued about repology.el package that does not belong to GNU
ELPA as that way GNU project would be giving references to
proprietary software.

Jean

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2021-01-07 23:38]:
> > Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2021 23:31:47 +0300
> > From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> > Cc: arthur.miller@live.com, rms@gnu.org, ams@gnu.org,
> >   dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> > 
> > > Where do you see the "in order to increase its popularity" part?  That
> > > would mean to say something about the non-free packages that would
> > > represent them as beneficial or better than others or worthy of
> > > installing and using.  I see none of that.
> > 
> > I see that repology.org does not make any distinction and it cannot do
> > that easily technically. So it does not make neither free software nor
> > proprietary better or worse by any reasons. And that is the problem.
> 
> How is it a problem? where's the promotion, please?

A WWW index of hyperlinks is promotion of hyperlinks. Simple placement
of a hyperlink on anybody's website is promotion of the other
website. That is how Internet works. Software is promoted on
repology.org in my opinion, and in yours maybe not. I was thinking it
is obvious. Just as it is promoted on Trisquel, just as it is promoted
in Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre or Gentoo, so software is promoted on
repology.org

When Yahoo had an index of websites, just to enter into the index
people had to pay money for review and when it would be successful,
those websites would receive larger number of website visitors,
buyers, users.

In the same sense by showing information like hyperlinks to free
software, or without hyperlinks just description of software, one is
promoting that software. Making a reference from repology.el would be
lack of our supervision on what the GNU project wish to reference to
GNU Emacs users.

Since 2021, GNU project did not provide references to proprietary
software. It did not provide Emacs package to help free software users
to find more proprietary software. I would be surprised if GNU project
begins doing that from 2021, as if we continue disintegrating the
basic principles of GNU project, by 2031 we may expect something
worse, maybe total disappearance of GNU project in its sense of free
software teaching center.

> > > GNU ELPA is not the issue here.  The issue here is total rejection of
> > > software that dares to provide information about software packages
> > > which might not be Free Software.  I explained why finding such
> > > information is important to me in my role as a GNU maintainer.
> > 
> > I am only talking about GNU ELPA and if repology.org should be in GNU
> > ELPA as that way we would influence millions of people by giving them
> > references to non-free software. It would speak badly of GNU project.
> > 
> > But that you use the package yourself, that is freedom of choice.
> 
> But that's immoral, isn't it?

Myself, I look at words like moral as agreements with society and do
not judge your actions to be moral or immoral, it is personal
choice. I find nothing wrong in you using it. I make some distinction
so the word "ethics" is personal for me, and "moral" is social
norm. And I do not find it neither moral nor immoral for you or
anybody else, as I do not judge people.

Personally, I am judging what GNU ELPA as free software project and
part of GNU Emacs should show to free software users, should it
provide a search engine within GNU Emacs, easily accessible, where
users can easily find proprietary software? Then I say personally to
that question NO. That is all. To me, it is not related to morality,
it is related to what GNU project is about, teaching people about free
software.

Who uses what beyond GNU project or beyond GNU ELPA is not issue, I am
not telling people not to use anything. But I may disadvise them and
tell them why.

> If some other maintainer asks me how to do this job, I cannot tell
> him or her about repology.org, can I?  If I do, Jean Louis will
> pounce on me and say that it's against GNU policies, right?

Ah come on, I am last to tell so. :-) And I never even talked about
it. Obviously we repeated multiple times "repology.org" and we speak
about it. I do not tell other people what to speak or how to express
themselves.

But if repology.org would be a hyperlink on GNU.org website then I may
object to it, but then again, accept the final resolution by
maintainers.

Jean

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > You are exagerating.  Nobody is saying don't do research, I'm quite
   > sure you are capable of finding that information on your own.  But it
   > is a different thing for GNU do provide that information for you.

   But GNU software shouldn't help me in research?

In the research of non-free software, obviously no.

   > Compare it to listing weapons on a web page by an organization that is
   > trying to get them removed from the streets...

   Bad comparison. Please refer to the first paragraph of the email you 
   were replying to.

Maybe you could explain why it is a bad comparison.  I read the first
paragraph, but I fail to see what your point here is.  

If the idea of weapons is what is bother some, one could replace it
with an organization trying to eliminate all polka candy, while still
listing or providing a way to search manufacturers of polka candy.

The point that was tried to be made here is that it isn't a self
serving goal.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

If the goal of the GNU project is to eliminate non-free software, why
should it help you, or anyone else in finding such software?  You can
find it on your own, nobody is stopping you -- but why should the GNU
project or projects under its umbrella who have their main goal of is
getting rid of such software work against its own goals?

   >    I see no problem here, either: repology.org doesn't promote or
   >    legitimize any of the packages whose information it records.
   > 
   > It does so by listing (describing) them; that legitimizes the non-free
   > programs.

   You are saying those programs are breaking the law?

The GNU project policy is to not legitimizes non-free software, what
the law says is irrelevant here.  So I fail to see what law has to do
with anything.

And as to why I elided much of your response is because you are being
discourteous, and double so here.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 07.01.2021 23:07, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> If the goal of the GNU project is to eliminate non-free software, why

Eliminate it by ignoring it, I take it.

> should it help you, or anyone else in finding such software?  You can
> find it on your own, nobody is stopping you -- but why should the GNU
> project or projects under its umbrella who have their main goal of is
> getting rid of such software work against its own goals?

Because we live in a real world, and we solve real problems, and it's 
very often useful to how others solve it.

You might also want to look into the origins of GNU.

Don't tell me there wasn't any research done into existing proprietary 
software during that time. I don't see why it's suddenly a bad strategy 
these days.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Good way to go is to duplicate repology.org server on other domain and
  > provide package listings from fully free FSF endorsed GNU/Linux
  > distributions or non-GNU fully free OS-es such as Replicant.

That is an interesting idea.  Do the people that run repology.org
publish the software that runs the site?

Perhaps the most useful way to do this would be to include only free
packages but show them in all distros.

Our site could be frepology.org.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

* Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> [2021-01-08 09:26]:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>   > Good way to go is to duplicate repology.org server on other domain and
>   > provide package listings from fully free FSF endorsed GNU/Linux
>   > distributions or non-GNU fully free OS-es such as Replicant.
> 
> That is an interesting idea.  Do the people that run repology.org
> publish the software that runs the site?
> 
> Perhaps the most useful way to do this would be to include only free
> packages but show them in all distros.
> 
> Our site could be frepology.org.

Yes, they publish the software.

https://github.com/repology/repology-updater
https://github.com/repology/repology-webapp
https://github.com/repology/repology-rules

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2021 00:00:36 +0300
> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> Cc: arthur.miller@live.com, rms@gnu.org, ams@gnu.org,
>   dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> 
> > > I see that repology.org does not make any distinction and it cannot do
> > > that easily technically. So it does not make neither free software nor
> > > proprietary better or worse by any reasons. And that is the problem.
> > 
> > How is it a problem? where's the promotion, please?
> 
> A WWW index of hyperlinks is promotion of hyperlinks. Simple placement
> of a hyperlink on anybody's website is promotion of the other
> website.

That doesn't match the meaning of the word, please re-read its
definition.  Reference and promotion are not the same thing.

> Since 2021, GNU project did not provide references to proprietary
> software.

What GNU project does is not sacred.  The policy is set by humans, and
the reasoning for that policy is human reasoning.  Thus, arguments
about what we have been doing are not valid as reasons against changes
in that policy, because new convincing reasoning, as well as specific
new practical use cases brought to light, can legitimately change or
augment existing policies.  Failure to do so, or even to consider
changes, would mean that GNU is a dogmatic movement, which it isn't,
and never has been.

> I would be surprised if GNU project begins doing that from 2021, as
> if we continue disintegrating the basic principles of GNU project,
> by 2031 we may expect something worse, maybe total disappearance of
> GNU project in its sense of free software teaching center.

Forgive me my language, but this is FUD.  You have no real basis for
spreading such fears.  It isn't like what's proposed here is
cancellation of the GNU Manifesto or anything basic like that.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
> Cc: eliz@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support, arthur.miller@live.com,
> 	rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2021 16:07:13 -0500
> 
>    > You are exagerating.  Nobody is saying don't do research, I'm quite
>    > sure you are capable of finding that information on your own.  But it
>    > is a different thing for GNU do provide that information for you.
> 
>    But GNU software shouldn't help me in research?
> 
> In the research of non-free software, obviously no.

And that is a serious problem, because GNU maintainers need to do that
quite frequently, as part of their job they do for GNU.

And other software users and professionals are likely to do that as
well, in order to study software algorithms and implementations.  Let
me remind you that (AFAIK) one of the main reasons for starting GNU
was the inability to share ideas about software design and
implementation, due to commercial entities' enforcement of a system
where showing the code was prohibited.  It would be ironic if the GNU
project prevented its followers from exercising the same freedom, by
denying us the information about where to find that source code to
begin with.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
> Cc: dgutov@yandex.ru, bugs@gnu.support, arthur.miller@live.com,
> 	rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangets@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2021 16:07:17 -0500
> 
>    I presented a practical problem I have every day in my role as a GNU
>    maintainer.  Why can't you respond to that specific problem, which is
>    both of practical interest and of relevance to Emacs?
> 
> Because I don't see how it is a problem that the GNU project is going
> to solve.  Nor is it one _I_ wish to help you solve either, because I
> think non-free software is bad so I'm won't be helping with that.  It
> is also not a task that you must solve as a GNU maintainer, you can
> fully ignore it infact if you so want to -- but that is up to you.

How can I ignore a package before I _know_ that it is non-free?  And
how can I know it's non-free except by looking at it?

Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Göktuğ Kayaalp]

On 2021-01-08 09:04 +02, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
>>    > You are exagerating.  Nobody is saying don't do research, I'm quite
>>    > sure you are capable of finding that information on your own.  But it
>>    > is a different thing for GNU do provide that information for you.
>>    But GNU software shouldn't help me in research?
>> In the research of non-free software, obviously no.
> [... snip ...]  It would be ironic if the GNU project prevented its
> followers from exercising the same freedom, by denying us the
> information about where to find that source code to begin with.

Well said.  All freedoms are both limited and ensured by other freedoms
and the practicalities of the world we’re in, and a lot of talk here
actively ignores that in some weird and sad doublethink fashion.

Free software is a privilege, as it is.  It requires a lot of knowledge
about computing praxis and culture, internet culture, legal stuff, and
politics.  Not everyone knows these stuff and it is not easy to learn
this stuff well.  You need to invest a lot of time, which is
increasingly more scarce for most of the world, even for formerly
privileged folk.  People can hardly find time for recreative and/or
social activities.

I assume the first and foremost principle of GNU and FSF would be to
have software freedom prevail for all.  That’s a good cause and one I
can get behind as an individual.

It’s fundamental and inevitable and unavoidable for free software to
interact and cooperate with non-free software, if such a goal is not
limited to the use cases of some privileged hackers.  Most software, and
most of popular software is closed source.  Most users of software
_cannot_ avoid non-free software.  By witholding vital information
regarding integration/interaction with a mostly non-free world,
information _that we HAVE_ from most people on Earth that use computers,
we are but comdeming them to non-free software.  And we are doing what
politicians do: ignoring the real problems of the people we think we’re
helping as we enjoy our privileges atop our ivory towers, and an abyss
grows between our reality and the reality of the greater world.

Such an attitude reeks of hubris and privilege and disconnect and a
distinct lack of empathy.  And that’s not only off putting but also
creates concrete obstructions for wide spread adoption of FOSS, which in
turn means software freedom is one that only a tiny cabal out of all
people can enjoy.  If software freedom is instead to be a human right
and free software is to be accessible to all, a great stepping stone
would be to cooperate with the non-free world so excellently as to
render the virtues and advantages of FOSS indubitably and unmistakably
obvious to even non-technical users.

Perfect is the enemy of good.  Purism contaminates.  Elitism breeds
ignorance and malice.



I want to be brief about this, what I’m telling should hopefully be
clear but if not I can follow up with a more concrete writeup a few days
later when I’ll have more ample time.

-- 
İ. Göktuğ Kayaalp / @cadadr / <https://www.gkayaalp.com/>
pgp:   024C 30DD 597D 142B 49AC 40EB 465C D949 B101 2427

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Arthur Miller]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2021 00:00:36 +0300
>> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
>> Cc: arthur.miller@live.com, rms@gnu.org, ams@gnu.org,
>>   dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
>> 
>> > > I see that repology.org does not make any distinction and it cannot do
>> > > that easily technically. So it does not make neither free software nor
>> > > proprietary better or worse by any reasons. And that is the problem.
>> > 
>> > How is it a problem? where's the promotion, please?
>> 
>> A WWW index of hyperlinks is promotion of hyperlinks. Simple placement
>> of a hyperlink on anybody's website is promotion of the other
>> website.
>
> That doesn't match the meaning of the word, please re-read its
> definition.  Reference and promotion are not the same thing.
>
>> Since 2021, GNU project did not provide references to proprietary
>> software.
>
> What GNU project does is not sacred.  The policy is set by humans, and
> the reasoning for that policy is human reasoning.  Thus, arguments
> about what we have been doing are not valid as reasons against changes
> in that policy, because new convincing reasoning, as well as specific
> new practical use cases brought to light, can legitimately change or
> augment existing policies.  Failure to do so, or even to consider
> changes, would mean that GNU is a dogmatic movement, which it isn't,
> and never has been.
Thank you for this wording. I personally, mostly based on the from
writings on this list, got impression that GNU was on more conservative
and even dogmatic side of things. Might be me missjudging based on
writings of individuals that may or may not be representatives of the
GNU project itself.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

Eli, I am managing websites since 1995. Placing references for software on websites, or newspapers, or in emails, or in directories, catalogue, anywhere, including in GNU ELPA , be it a link or not, Just text, It Is promotion of those websites, software, or opinions.

If we declare in such references that e.g. Skype is proprietary and abusive software then it is anti promotion, and we then rather promote free software like Jami as replacement.

Repology.el package does not constitute anti promotion like the example from GNU.org, it just promotes all kind of software without distinction as many included repositories do not show licensing information, some do, some not.




On January 8, 2021 6:58:22 AM UTC, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2021 00:00:36 +0300
>> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
>> Cc: arthur.miller@live.com, rms@gnu.org, ams@gnu.org,
>>   dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
>> 
>> > > I see that repology.org does not make any distinction and it
>cannot do
>> > > that easily technically. So it does not make neither free
>software nor
>> > > proprietary better or worse by any reasons. And that is the
>problem.
>> > 
>> > How is it a problem? where's the promotion, please?
>> 
>> A WWW index of hyperlinks is promotion of hyperlinks. Simple
>placement
>> of a hyperlink on anybody's website is promotion of the other
>> website.
>
>That doesn't match the meaning of the word, please re-read its
>definition.  Reference and promotion are not the same thing.
>
>> Since 2021, GNU project did not provide references to proprietary
>> software.
>
>What GNU project does is not sacred.  The policy is set by humans, and
>the reasoning for that policy is human reasoning.  Thus, arguments
>about what we have been doing are not valid as reasons against changes
>in that policy, because new convincing reasoning, as well as specific
>new practical use cases brought to light, can legitimately change or
>augment existing policies.  Failure to do so, or even to consider
>changes, would mean that GNU is a dogmatic movement, which it isn't,
>and never has been.
>
>> I would be surprised if GNU project begins doing that from 2021, as
>> if we continue disintegrating the basic principles of GNU project,
>> by 2031 we may expect something worse, maybe total disappearance of
>> GNU project in its sense of free software teaching center.
>
>Forgive me my language, but this is FUD.  You have no real basis for
>spreading such fears.  It isn't like what's proposed here is
>cancellation of the GNU Manifesto or anything basic like that.

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Jean Louis]

>Free software is a privilege, as it is.  It requires a lot of knowledge
>about computing praxis and culture, internet culture, legal stuff, and
>politics.  

How privilege? I don't see how is free software privilege. Not for me. It should be basic human right for users to have control of their data, and not to let other companies or individuals control my data.

Better said proprietary software is mischievous unfortunate degrading event of human history and we are working to the reverse it.

>It’s fundamental and inevitable and unavoidable for free software to
>interact and cooperate with non-free software, if such a goal is not
>limited to the use cases of some privileged hackers.  

We have fully free software that need not ever interact or cooperate with non free. So I don't know where you pull out that anti information. Just start with www.gnu.org to find software that never ever need to cooperate with proprietary software.


>Most software,
>and
>most of popular software is closed source.  

I did not count to say so. But what is popular it does not matter in GNU project, what matters is that we do have fully free software and operating systems. 

>Most users of software
>_cannot_ avoid non-free software. 

Whoever is informed well and decides so themselves can switch to fully free software. People make decisions on their own.

GNU project is everything else but not ivory tower. Otherwise you would not be able to discuss here.

 What GNU project promotes is free software. GNU never says to its users to use exclusively free software and never condemns people for using proprietary software.

I thus do not see where is problem.

Your statements are too general and I do not see how they relate.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

That is maybe your way of finding free software. Since 1999 I find it from distributions and if I don't believe it enough I will look into license.

I never go to proprietary software catalogue to find free software. Today we know by work of fully free and FSF endorsed Distributions which packages are free and which not.

Easy



On January 8, 2021 7:06:38 AM UTC, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
>> Cc: dgutov@yandex.ru, bugs@gnu.support, arthur.miller@live.com,
>> 	rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangets@gnu.org
>> Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2021 16:07:17 -0500
>> 
>>    I presented a practical problem I have every day in my role as a
>GNU
>>    maintainer.  Why can't you respond to that specific problem, which
>is
>>    both of practical interest and of relevance to Emacs?
>> 
>> Because I don't see how it is a problem that the GNU project is going
>> to solve.  Nor is it one _I_ wish to help you solve either, because I
>> think non-free software is bad so I'm won't be helping with that.  It
>> is also not a task that you must solve as a GNU maintainer, you can
>> fully ignore it infact if you so want to -- but that is up to you.
>
>How can I ignore a package before I _know_ that it is non-free?  And
>how can I know it's non-free except by looking at it?

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Thu, 07 Jan 2021, Jean Louis wrote:

> * Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> [2021-01-07 22:38]:
>> Gentoo is about choice, and has always leaned a little on the pragmatic
>> side. If we would (for example) exclude all non-free Linux firmware,
>> then I am certain that in order to have a usable system, most users
>> would choose to install such firmware nevertheless, bypassing the
>> package manager. Again, our default there is to install only free
>> firmware, but we leave users the choice to install additional blobs when
>> they explicitly ask for it.

> Then maybe that is how users are trained or indoctrinated into Gentoo
> as managers or maintainers of Gentoo did not teach users about free
> software. I am sorry for that. That is why Gentoo will not be endorsed
> by GNU project.

I know, and presumably it will never be. Gentoo as a source-based distro
can also be seen as a "metadistribution" or "distribution toolkit",
so it is relatively easy to use it as basis for building a binary
distribution. Distros derived from Gentoo may have completely different
goals, and examples include Ututo XS (which used to be on the FSF's
whitelist IIRC) and Chromium OS.

We couldn't be a metadistribution if we were to follow a purist approach
and exclude all ebuilds ("recipes" for building packages) for non-free
packages from our main repository. Plus, as I've explained before, the
dividing line is sometimes within an upstream package when it includes
both free and non-free components.

However, our defaults are such that the package manager won't install
any non-free software. Also note that our ebuilds themselves are GPL
licensed.

> I am using mostly Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre now and I have no problems
> installing it on plethora of computers. I may use Trisquel or other
> FSF endorsed fully free GNU/Linux distribution. Not that I use any
> firmware and it is true that maybe some wireless chip does not work,
> but hey, it does not matter as we all have Internet here. I have
> connected Internet by mobile phone and USB tethering method to one
> computer that serves as router to switch that connects other
> computers. It works well in a team.

Nice. I suppose the mobile phone runs free software then? What are you
using there?

OTOH, I guess I'd have a hard time convincing a typical MS-Windows user
to switch to GNU/Linux if I told them "look, your wireless will no
longer work" or "sorry, no mitigation for Spectre/Meltdown because the
CPU microcode is non-free". And that may also be one of the reasons why
the top ten list on (e.g.) distrowatch doesn't include any of the FSF
recommended distros. (Which by no means says anything about their
quality, but it does say something about their popularity.)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2021 11:48:53 +0000
> CC: rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, arthur.miller@live.com,
>   dgutov@yandex.ru
> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> 
> That is maybe your way of finding free software. Since 1999 I find it from distributions and if I don't believe it enough I will look into license.

I'm not talking about finding free software, I'm talking about
determining whether a given package is free software, and under what
license it is distributed.  The FSD doesn't give me that information.
It also doesn't give me enough information about related components,
like fonts, for example.

Finding the facts about these components is the bread and butter of
every GNU maintainer for a more-or-less complex GNU package.  Not
being able to do this part of my job with GNU-endorsed free software
is a major blow.  And the most painful part of that blow is that I
cannot understand the reasons for it.  Once again, repology.org does
NOT promote any software packages it lists, regardless of what you'd
like to represent.

Likewise, such limitations prevents users from being able to study
source code of any package that shows its code, something I think is
detrimental to free exchange of ideas about software, which I always
thought was the important goal of GNU.

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Aldric Giacomoni]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2406 bytes --]

*sigh*

It should be a basic human right. That isn't the current reality. It is
currently a privilege. Many good folks are working very hard to transform
this privilege into a basic human right.

Are we done trolling yet?

> Your statements are too general and I do not see how they relate

It's okay don't worry about it. Your point of view is the only correct one,
so don't work too hard in exploring other people's.
--

Aldric.
Sent from a mobile device.

On Fri, Jan 8, 2021, 06:46 Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> wrote:

>
>
>
> >Free software is a privilege, as it is.  It requires a lot of knowledge
> >about computing praxis and culture, internet culture, legal stuff, and
> >politics.
>
> How privilege? I don't see how is free software privilege. Not for me. It
> should be basic human right for users to have control of their data, and
> not to let other companies or individuals control my data.
>
> Better said proprietary software is mischievous unfortunate degrading
> event of human history and we are working to the reverse it.
>
> >It’s fundamental and inevitable and unavoidable for free software to
> >interact and cooperate with non-free software, if such a goal is not
> >limited to the use cases of some privileged hackers.
>
> We have fully free software that need not ever interact or cooperate with
> non free. So I don't know where you pull out that anti information. Just
> start with www.gnu.org to find software that never ever need to cooperate
> with proprietary software.
>
>
> >Most software,
> >and
> >most of popular software is closed source.
>
> I did not count to say so. But what is popular it does not matter in GNU
> project, what matters is that we do have fully free software and operating
> systems.
>
> >Most users of software
> >_cannot_ avoid non-free software.
>
> Whoever is informed well and decides so themselves can switch to fully
> free software. People make decisions on their own.
>
> GNU project is everything else but not ivory tower. Otherwise you would
> not be able to discuss here.
>
>  What GNU project promotes is free software. GNU never says to its users
> to use exclusively free software and never condemns people for using
> proprietary software.
>
> I thus do not see where is problem.
>
> Your statements are too general and I do not see how they relate.
>
>
>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3281 bytes --]

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

You can study, is free.

I don't see problem with anybody wishing to study anything.



On January 8, 2021 7:04:13 AM UTC, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
>> Cc: eliz@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support, arthur.miller@live.com,
>> 	rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
>> Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2021 16:07:13 -0500
>> 
>>    > You are exagerating.  Nobody is saying don't do research, I'm
>quite
>>    > sure you are capable of finding that information on your own. 
>But it
>>    > is a different thing for GNU do provide that information for
>you.
>> 
>>    But GNU software shouldn't help me in research?
>> 
>> In the research of non-free software, obviously no.
>
>And that is a serious problem, because GNU maintainers need to do that
>quite frequently, as part of their job they do for GNU.
>
>And other software users and professionals are likely to do that as
>well, in order to study software algorithms and implementations.  Let
>me remind you that (AFAIK) one of the main reasons for starting GNU
>was the inability to share ideas about software design and
>implementation, due to commercial entities' enforcement of a system
>where showing the code was prohibited.  It would be ironic if the GNU
>project prevented its followers from exercising the same freedom, by
>denying us the information about where to find that source code to
>begin with.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

Does that mean you wish to exclusively include repology.el into GNU ELPA?

Like you can't use that package without including it in GNU ELPA? Can you use website directly?

I can.

What is real problem there?


On January 8, 2021 12:34:22 PM UTC, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2021 11:48:53 +0000
>> CC: rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, arthur.miller@live.com,
>>   dgutov@yandex.ru
>> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
>> 
>> That is maybe your way of finding free software. Since 1999 I find it
>from distributions and if I don't believe it enough I will look into
>license.
>
>I'm not talking about finding free software, I'm talking about
>determining whether a given package is free software, and under what
>license it is distributed.  The FSD doesn't give me that information.
>It also doesn't give me enough information about related components,
>like fonts, for example.
>
>Finding the facts about these components is the bread and butter of
>every GNU maintainer for a more-or-less complex GNU package.  Not
>being able to do this part of my job with GNU-endorsed free software
>is a major blow.  And the most painful part of that blow is that I
>cannot understand the reasons for it.  Once again, repology.org does
>NOT promote any software packages it lists, regardless of 

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2021 13:56:40 +0000
> CC: emacs-tangents@gnu.org, rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, ams@gnu.org,
>   arthur.miller@live.com, dgutov@yandex.ru
> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> 
> Does that mean you wish to exclusively include repology.el into GNU ELPA?
> 
> Like you can't use that package without including it in GNU ELPA? Can you use website directly?
> 
> I can.
> 
> What is real problem there?

I thought it was obvious.  Since it's evidently isn't, let me cross
the t's and dot the i's for you:

We develop Emacs because we think it helps users.  We don't develop it
as some academic exercise to be shown in some ivory tower, nor as
merely an example of what Free Software can become.

I came to Emacs because it helped me do my everyday's work, and I've
taken upon myself the burden of being its maintainer because I want it
to help others, and become better at helping them.

Thus, whether I personally can access that site is immaterial.  I
don't need your, or anybody's, permission to do whatever I want with
my systems.  It's the Emacs user community that I'm trying to help,
and I believe I'm not the only one who needs to do those tasks that I
described.  Refusal to make this, or any other package that has the
similar audacity of showing information about software in a completely
neutral way, to be available from GNU ELPA diminishes from the
community, and thus hurts me in my effort to help the community
members to enjoy software freedom.  That is why I'm speaking up.

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Fri, 08 Jan 2021, Jean Louis wrote:

> What GNU project promotes is free software. GNU never says to its
> users to use exclusively free software and never condemns people for
> using proprietary software.

Yet it maintains a blacklist of common GNU/Linux distros and labels them
as "unethical", even if these distros (like Debian and Fedora) have a
clear policy to exclude anything non-free from their main repositories.

I am certain that these distro maintainers act in good faith if they
mention (for example) CPU microcode for Spectre mitigation in their
documentation, even if that microcode isn't free software.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > If the goal of the GNU project is to eliminate non-free software,
   > why

   Eliminate it by ignoring it, I take it.

Not mentioning a program isn't the same as ignoring its existance.

   You might also want to look into the origins of GNU.

It has been like this since the GNU project began.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
   > Cc: eliz@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support, arthur.miller@live.com,
   > 	rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
   > Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2021 16:07:13 -0500
   > 
   >    > You are exagerating.  Nobody is saying don't do research, I'm quite
   >    > sure you are capable of finding that information on your own.  But it
   >    > is a different thing for GNU do provide that information for you.
   > 
   >    But GNU software shouldn't help me in research?
   > 
   > In the research of non-free software, obviously no.

   And that is a serious problem, because GNU maintainers need to do that
   quite frequently, as part of their job they do for GNU.

As a GNU maintainer you can use other venues to find that information,
again nobody is stopping _you_.  But the GNU _project_ or GNU
_software_ is not there to help you find non-free software.

I do not understand what is so confusing here, how you as a person (in
the capacity of a mainainter or not) wish to figure out stuff and what
the GNU project links to are two entierly orthogonal issues.  

Its like asking why the GNU project doesn't provide information about
finding good polka candy recipies, its outside the scope of the
project (ignoring the issue that non-free software being immoral and
unethical).

   And other software users and professionals are likely to do that as
   well, in order to study software algorithms and implementations.  Let
   me remind you that (AFAIK) one of the main reasons for starting GNU
   was the inability to share ideas about software design and
   implementation, due to commercial entities' enforcement of a system
   where showing the code was prohibited.  It would be ironic if the GNU
   project prevented its followers from exercising the same freedom, by
   denying us the information about where to find that source code to
   begin with.

It doesn't prevent anyone from doing any kind of research, it is just
not the place for GNU to help you in doing said research.  There have
been lists (e.g., the high priority list) of functionality which is
lacking on free operating systems -- sometimes even mentioning very
well known non-free software we (the project) wishes to replace.

But when the program is unknown, one can simply list the features one
wishes a program to have and not give it the extra promotion.  Since
if we say that a program has no free software counter part, it would
be quite normal for someone to go decide that they will install the
non-free program until such a day.  And that would be working against
the goal.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

* Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> [2021-01-08 17:34]:
> > * Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> [2021-01-07 22:38]:
> >> Gentoo is about choice, and has always leaned a little on the pragmatic
> >> side. If we would (for example) exclude all non-free Linux firmware,
> >> then I am certain that in order to have a usable system, most users
> >> would choose to install such firmware nevertheless, bypassing the
> >> package manager. Again, our default there is to install only free
> >> firmware, but we leave users the choice to install additional blobs when
> >> they explicitly ask for it.
> 
> > Then maybe that is how users are trained or indoctrinated into Gentoo
> > as managers or maintainers of Gentoo did not teach users about free
> > software. I am sorry for that. That is why Gentoo will not be endorsed
> > by GNU project.
> 
> I know, and presumably it will never be. Gentoo as a source-based distro
> can also be seen as a "metadistribution" or "distribution toolkit",
> so it is relatively easy to use it as basis for building a binary
> distribution. Distros derived from Gentoo may have completely different
> goals, and examples include Ututo XS (which used to be on the FSF's
> whitelist IIRC) and Chromium OS.

Dear Ulrich,

I understand and I like the technology running Gentoo, as how I know
it, it is valuing source and then users can build it straight from
source, I hope I am right as I did not use it myself.

On the other hand, I cannot recommend it to my friends or business
partners as it does have different purpose then being a fully free
GNU/Linux distribution, so I recommend those like Guix, Trisquel,
Hyperbola, Parabola, PureOS, and others FSF endorsed distributions
like here: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

Jean

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Jean Louis]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2021-01-08 17:46]:
> > What is real problem there?
> 
> I thought it was obvious.  Since it's evidently isn't, let me cross
> the t's and dot the i's for you:
> 
> We develop Emacs because we think it helps users.  We don't develop it
> as some academic exercise to be shown in some ivory tower, nor as
> merely an example of what Free Software can become.
> 
> I came to Emacs because it helped me do my everyday's work, and I've
> taken upon myself the burden of being its maintainer because I want it
> to help others, and become better at helping them.
> 
> Thus, whether I personally can access that site is immaterial.  I
> don't need your, or anybody's, permission to do whatever I want with
> my systems.  It's the Emacs user community that I'm trying to help,
> and I believe I'm not the only one who needs to do those tasks that I
> described.  Refusal to make this, or any other package that has the
> similar audacity of showing information about software in a completely
> neutral way, to be available from GNU ELPA diminishes from the
> community, and thus hurts me in my effort to help the community
> members to enjoy software freedom.  That is why I'm speaking up.

If I understand it better you wish to help general Emacs users without
regard if GNU as project would be giving all those references to
non-free software.

I find it unfortunate as that is not quite aligned with GNU project
and I hope you will not find that too odd, you have known that GNU
project is about free software.

Now I wish you good luck,
Jean

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
> Cc: dgutov@yandex.ru, bugs@gnu.support, arthur.miller@live.com,
> 	rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2021 12:22:38 -0500
> 
> I do not understand what is so confusing here, how you as a person (in
> the capacity of a mainainter or not) wish to figure out stuff and what
> the GNU project links to are two entierly orthogonal issues.  

They aren't: I _want_ to use GNU software.  I do use it as much as I
can.  Otherwise I wouldn't be here.  I do not understand how this
simple idea is so hard to understand.

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Jean Louis]

* Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> [2021-01-08 19:25]:
> >>>>> On Fri, 08 Jan 2021, Jean Louis wrote:
> 
> > What GNU project promotes is free software. GNU never says to its
> > users to use exclusively free software and never condemns people for
> > using proprietary software.
> 
> Yet it maintains a blacklist of common GNU/Linux distros and labels them
> as "unethical", even if these distros (like Debian and Fedora) have a
> clear policy to exclude anything non-free from their main
> repositories.

I am not sure if I understand well. Do you perceive labeling some
distros as unethical same as labeling users of the distro unethical?

For me that is not the same. Majority of GNU/Linux users are not well
informed about free software.

pDecision makers are well informed and they make conscious decisions to
provide access to proprietary software. For that set of people I would
say they act in a way that is contrary to free software philosophy,
they use it only technically without teaching people about it. So I
say, they do act with lack of responsibility in that regards. They
value their technical capabilities more than freedom of their users.

> I am certain that these distro maintainers act in good faith if they
> mention (for example) CPU microcode for Spectre mitigation in their
> documentation, even if that microcode isn't free software.

They may act in good faith. But that may not be aligned to free
software principles. Good faith as general term is not same as good
faith to provide fully free software OS.

I do not think that GNU project ever said anything about mentioning
any proprietary software in relation on how to liberate users. So what
if people mention it? I see no problem mentioning proprietary software
as long as we clearly say what is the problem with it.

Example:
https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html

So there is mentioning of Microsoft Windows there many times. Problems
are clearly listed with references for more understanding.

Then, Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre https://www.hyperbola.info also
mentions proprietary software and relevant software that is risk to
software freedom in a package named `your-freedom'

Example line from there is like:

abiword:abiword:::[semifree] Hard-codes nonfree fonts, [uses-nonprivacy] has non-privacy search engines and translators e.g. Google search engine and the defunct AltaVista’s Babel Fish translator which queries are redirected to the main Yahoo! page

Then maybe Hyperbola maintainers try to rectify it by changing
something in that software.

Or other example:

acetoneiso2::fsf:AcetoneISO:[uses-nonfree] ask to download and install nonfree poweriso

akonadi-calendar-tools::::[uses-nonfree] only useful with nonfree
qt5-webengine

apm::::[uses-nonfree] has no policy against distributing nonfree
software through their online database of Atom packages,
[uses-nonfree][uses-nonsecurity] make-depends on coffee-script and
depends on npm

ark:ark:::[uses-nonfree] recommends nonfree unrar

As you may see, software that relates to proprietary is mentioned and
nonfree software is mentioned, and purpose of mentioning it is to
point out that it is nonfree.

If we come back to repology.org server, they do not have the purpose
to say distinguish, so they just follow data structure of packages
they are pulling, regardless if such data structure does not speak or
does speak about the license of the software.

Jean

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Göktuğ Kayaalp]

On 2021-01-08 11:46 GMT, Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> wrote:
>>Free software is a privilege, as it is.  It requires a lot of
>>knowledge about computing praxis and culture, internet culture, legal
>>stuff, and politics.
> How privilege? I don't see how is free software privilege. Not for
> me. It should be basic human right for users to have control of their
> data, and not to let other companies or individuals control my data.

That’s what a privileged person would say.  E.g., I’m an ethnically
Turkish guy in Turkey.  I look Turkish, I speak Standard Turkish with
flawless mid-upper class Istanbulite accent, I’m a cisgender and
heterosexual male.  And I’m highly educated individual with a family
backing his higher ed adventure.  This means I don’t get stopped and
searched, I don’t get harassed on the street, I don’t need to be afraid
of the police, that I won’t be arrested or attacked for what language I
speak, I won’t be looked down upon, and won’t have to worry about a lot
of things women, LGBTQ+, and non-Turkish ethnicities will have to worry
about.  There’s a whole host of experiences that I will never have to
get to know in person just because who I am.  That’s how privilege
works.  It has you live in a safe, protective bubble.  And it blurs the
vision of the outer world.

Free software is a privilege if you don’t have the time to learn a whole
new culture.  Free software is a privilege if your hardware can’t run
it and you don’t have the money to buy stuff that does (for most people
even a dongle is a serious investment).  Free software is a privilege if
you don’t get to make decisions about what software to use.  Free
software is a privilege if a clan of so-called software freedom
advocates are censoring vital information because they happened to like
so, saying nonsense like:

> We have fully free software that need not ever interact or cooperate
> with non free.

This might be partially true for a software developer working only on
free software, but it’s a privileged position because very little people
have the chance to learn enough to do that and an even little
opportunities exist for those who do put in the time.

Meanwhile the rest of us plebeians have to make Zoom work on our
computers, use sub-optimal hardware, and figure things on our own.
All the while the likes of you see themselves entitled to judge the
morality of our choices and obligations.

>>Most software, and most of popular software is closed source.
> I did not count to say so. But what is popular it does not matter in
> GNU project, what matters is that we do have fully free software and
> operating systems.

We don’t.  Nobody has.  Maybe, as the one who attempts to deny the
experience of billions of people, it’s kinda on you to do the counting
there.

>>Most users of software _cannot_ avoid non-free software.
> Whoever is informed well and decides so themselves can switch to fully
> free software. People make decisions on their own.

No.  If you have to use Zoom for your classes or meetings, you have to.
If you need to use WhatsApp, you have to.  Nobody but a very small
amount of people are free in making these decisions.

> GNU project is everything else but not ivory tower. Otherwise you
> would not be able to discuss here.

Neat little non sequitur there.  GNU opens itself to the world and asks
everyone to back its cause so you don’t get to pick who says what
anyways.

> What GNU project promotes is free software. GNU never says to its
> users to use exclusively free software [...]

If you make it hard to use non-free software one _has_ to use with free
software they _want_ to use, this is effectively a discriminatory,
exclusionary, and unegalitarian practice.  And it’s also anti-GNU
because this makes it _really_ hard to suggest people that they give
free software a try.

> [...] and never condemns people for using proprietary software.

Yeah, no.


All in all, if GNU wants to be a fun little software guys group like
9front or OpenBSD, fine, but be honest about it.  If GNU and FSF wants
to fight for everyone’s software freedom and will continue to ask
donations for this cause, then this is not the way to do it.  It comes
off as entitled and disconnected.

Today, there’s nothing that’s uniquely copyleft software, maybe except
Emacs.  LLVM and clang is as good as GCC, coreutils is better than BSD
userland or busybox but not by a huge margin, Zsh is by no means
inferior to Bash, etc.  OSes like FreeBSD are almost fully viable on
desktop, and most of what works on GNU/Linux works there.  If copyleft
and free-as-in-speech-not-beer is to remain relevant in the future, this
whole attitude needs to change.

> Your statements are too general and I do not see how they relate.

You do not _want_ to see, FTFY.  There’s a reason I changed the subject
line.  But all in all, to satisfy your unprecedented love for specific
things and your dislike of attempting to make that last little
connection: your attack on repology.el comes from a privileged position
and the condemnation of even linking to information regarding non-free
software in the form of repology.org, going so far as to suggesting
stealing these people’s work and creating a knock-off ‘frepology.org’
comes from a privileged, exclusionary, and backwards position.  This
whole thing represents a self-destructive anti-free-software stance that
is detrimental to the quest for software freedom as a right for all
humans, and only caters to the handful FOSS zealots (one of which is I)
who have put years into learning this whole travesty of an online
culture and surrounding issues.

As someone who believes in software freedom as a general good for human
society I think you and the likes of you are hurting this endeavour.


-- 
İ. Göktuğ Kayaalp / @cadadr / <https://www.gkayaalp.com/>
pgp:   024C 30DD 597D 142B 49AC 40EB 465C D949 B101 2427

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2021 21:27:42 +0300
> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> Cc: emacs-tangents@gnu.org, rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, ams@gnu.org,
>   arthur.miller@live.com, dgutov@yandex.ru
> 
> > We develop Emacs because we think it helps users.  We don't develop it
> > as some academic exercise to be shown in some ivory tower, nor as
> > merely an example of what Free Software can become.
> > 
> > I came to Emacs because it helped me do my everyday's work, and I've
> > taken upon myself the burden of being its maintainer because I want it
> > to help others, and become better at helping them.
> > 
> > Thus, whether I personally can access that site is immaterial.  I
> > don't need your, or anybody's, permission to do whatever I want with
> > my systems.  It's the Emacs user community that I'm trying to help,
> > and I believe I'm not the only one who needs to do those tasks that I
> > described.  Refusal to make this, or any other package that has the
> > similar audacity of showing information about software in a completely
> > neutral way, to be available from GNU ELPA diminishes from the
> > community, and thus hurts me in my effort to help the community
> > members to enjoy software freedom.  That is why I'm speaking up.
> 
> If I understand it better you wish to help general Emacs users without
> regard if GNU as project would be giving all those references to
> non-free software.

I want help them because I don't see how these references cause any
damage to the Free Software cause.  Promoting non-free software and
inviting users to use it is indeed against our cause, but just telling
where it's stored isn't.  Our users aren't babies from whom we should
hide potentially dangerous stuff, they can make their own informed
decisions.

> you have known that GNU project is about free software.

I don't think the GNU project is about concealing information.  I hope
it isn't.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 08.01.2021 19:22, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> Its like asking why the GNU project doesn't provide information about
> finding good polka candy recipies

We're not talking about providing information, we're talking about 
censoring what a program is allowed to do.

And I'm pretty sure that programs for finding good polka candy recipes 
fall under the purview of the GNU project as well.

We don't want polka candy aficionados use proprietary programs for that, 
do we?

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 08.01.2021 19:22, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>     > If the goal of the GNU project is to eliminate non-free software,
>     > why
> 
>     Eliminate it by ignoring it, I take it.
> 
> Not mentioning a program isn't the same as ignoring its existance.

If you are making an emphasis on never mentioning "wrong" programs, you 
make a conscious choice toward ignoring them, as opposed to studying 
them and overtaking them.

That much should be obvious.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
> Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2021 12:22:36 -0500
> Cc: emacs-tangents@gnu.org, rms@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support, ulm@gentoo.org,
>  arthur.miller@live.com, eliz@gnu.org
> 
>    > If the goal of the GNU project is to eliminate non-free software,
>    > why
> 
>    Eliminate it by ignoring it, I take it.
> 
> Not mentioning a program isn't the same as ignoring its existance.

Not mentioning a program does nothing towards eliminating it, so it is
not a means to that end.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > If the goal of the GNU project is to eliminate non-free software, why

  > Eliminate it by ignoring it, I take it.

You have misrepresented one of the secondary things we do
while denying all the rest.  The only point that expresses
is your hostility, and that harms our discussion here.

Please pay attention to the Kind Communications Guidelines,
so you can express your recommendations in ways that contribute
to our work rather than hampering it.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Let's not have a discussion here about free vs nonfree GNU/Linux
distributions.

The situation is clear.  People have different positions because they
start from different goals and values.  There is no need to rehash it.
Just because it's a tangent does not mean we need to discuss it.



-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Just saying that a package exists and showing where its repository is
  > etc. is nowhere near promotion, it's simply information.

Please see the node References in the GNU Coding Standards for an
explanation of why informing people that an obscure package exists is
a form of promoting it.

repology.org is a catalog of packages including some nonfree packages.
Because of the latter, we don't want to refer the public there.

This is not to say that using repology.org is ipso facto bad.  It is
certainly possible to use repology.org to do good things.  In some
cases it would be good to tell a free software developer about
repology.org because that would aid per free software work.

So if using repology.org helps you work on Emacs, by all means use it.
(Did anyone here say you shouldn't?)

But we shouldn't refer _the public_ to repology.org.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  >    > You are exagerating.  Nobody is saying don't do research, I'm quite
  >    > sure you are capable of finding that information on your own.  But it
  >    > is a different thing for GNU do provide that information for you.

  >    But GNU software shouldn't help me in research?

  > In the research of non-free software, obviously no.

I think that oversimplifies the situation.

You can use GNU software to do anything.  You can use IceCat to read
about nonfree programs on the web, look at their repos on GitHub, look
at info about them in repology.org -- anything at all.  You can use GCC
to compile them, too.

Researching nonfree software is usually a bad thing to do, because
people generally do it so as to use or develop nonfree software.  On
the other hand, if it is to help replace those nonfree programs, that
is a good thing.

GNU programs don't try to judge the morality of whatever you are
doing.  They do what you command.

The issue about repology.org is not about that.  It is whether we
should tell the public about its existence, for instance by including
in Emacs a program specifically aimed at that site.



-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  >    > It does so by listing (describing) them; that legitimizes the non-free
  >    > programs.

  >    You are saying those programs are breaking the law?

  > The GNU project policy is to not legitimizes non-free software, what
  > the law says is irrelevant here.  So I fail to see what law has to do
  > with anything.

I think there is a linguistic misunderstanding here.  "Legitimate" can
mean "legitimate according to the law" or "legitimate according to
standards of right and wrong".  I generally use it in the latter
sense, and I think you do too.  Maybe Eli applied the first
interpretation.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > >Free software is a privilege, as it is.  It requires a lot of knowledge
  > >about computing praxis and culture, internet culture, legal stuff, and
  > >politics.  

  > How privilege? I don't see how is free software privilege. Not for
  > me. It should be basic human right for users to have control of
  > their data, and not to let other companies or individuals control
  > my data.

This looks like a miscommnuication to me.  I think that what you are
arguing against may not be what the other person meant.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > >Free software is a privilege, as it is.  It requires a lot of knowledge
  > >about computing praxis and culture, internet culture, legal stuff, and
  > >politics.  

  > How privilege? I don't see how is free software privilege. Not for
  > me. It should be basic human right for users to have control of
  > their data, and not to let other companies or individuals control
  > my data.

This looks like a miscommnuication to me.  I think that what you are
arguing against may not be what Göktuğ meant.


  > >Most software,
  > >and
  > >most of popular software is closed source.  

  > I did not count to say so. But what is popular it does not matter
  > in GNU project, what matters is that we do have fully free
  > software and operating systems.

What I see here is a disagreement about basic premises -- goals and
values.  I think you recognize that disagreement but Göktuğ doesn't
yet.

Göktuğ, I suggest reading
ttps://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html to
see what our goals and values are.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > No.  If you have to use Zoom for your classes or meetings, you have to.
  > If you need to use WhatsApp, you have to.

Not necessarily.  I know people who have pressured/convinced
institutions such as schools to let them use free software instead.
It is not easy, and only a fraction succeed -- but that is better than
zero chance.

Pkease do not exaggerate hopelessness.

You are aware of many forms of mistreatment of disprivileged groups.
Usually there are campaigns to end those patterns of mistreatment.
Society is starting to become aware of them.

Nonfree software is an injustice too.  Escaping it is not easy -- but
our work is to make it easier and encourage people to escape.

Hardly anyone recognizes this injustice, so one of our priorities is
making people notice.  Every time I mention that I refuse to use Zoom
or WhatsApp, it is a chance to make people aware of the issue,
and that is progress.


  > If you make it hard to use non-free software one _has_ to use with free
  > software they _want_ to use, this is effectively a discriminatory,
  > exclusionary, and unegalitarian practice.

We never _make_ our programs not run on nonfree systems.
You're attacking a straw man.

Perhaps you've misunderstood what our practices are.

We make our programs work with free software because that's what we
want.  If you want to change them to interoperate with some nonfree
program or system, you are free to do that.  We might even help
maintain your changes, if they are easy to merge in.

But we always give priority to using software in the Free World,
on GNU.

The last part of your message seems to be a lot of vituperation.
If you have such a low opinion of our efforts, nobody insists you
have to participate.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I want help them because I don't see how these references cause any
  > damage to the Free Software cause.  Promoting non-free software and
  > inviting users to use it is indeed against our cause, but just telling
  > where it's stored isn't.

Telling people that the package _exists_ is what we want to avoid.

  > I don't think the GNU project is about concealing information.  I hope
  > it isn't.

The information is available to the public without our help, so
we are not concealing it.  But we have no obligation to go out
of our way to spread the word.


  > Not mentioning a program does nothing towards eliminating it,

Actually it does, sometimes.  If we avoid mentioning a program we
avoid recruiting more users for it.  That can eventually contribute to
its elimination.

The point is, it avoids leading people to use that program.
A nonfree program denies freedom to its users.  If we lead a person
to use the nonfree program, we lead per to surrender freedom to it.
Therefore we try to avoid that.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > If you are making an emphasis on never mentioning "wrong" programs, you 
  > make a conscious choice toward ignoring them, as opposed to studying 
  > them and overtaking them.

Of course.  We intentionally, specifically, avoid mentioning obscure
nonfree programs as options to be used.  (We may mention them to
condemn them.)

See the node References in the GNU Coding Standards.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > What GNU project promotes is free software. GNU never says to its
  > > users to use exclusively free software and never condemns people for
  > > using proprietary software.

  > Yet it maintains a blacklist of common GNU/Linux distros and labels them
  > as "unethical", even if these distros (like Debian and Fedora) have a
  > clear policy to exclude anything non-free from their main repositories.

This is a miscommunication.  You and Jean are talking about different
things.

Jean is presenting the GNU Project's moral philosophy.  We say that
every nonfree program is an injustice, so recommending a nonfree
program for use is unethical.  To lead users to run it is unethical.

When we say that a distro is unethical, that simply means that the
distro contains or recommends or leads users to run nonfree software.
Nothing other than that.

It's not a personal criticism of the distro developers.  I'm confident
that the Debian developers and the Gentoo developers are honest and
follow their moral codes.  We don't mean to criticize them as people.

We try to make this clear in gnu.org/distros.  If you see anything
there which is not clear, please write me privately and show me the
text you mean.



-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: frepology.org

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Would someone like to volunteer to set up frepology.org?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Jean Louis]

* Göktuğ Kayaalp <self@gkayaalp.com> [2021-01-08 22:17]:
> On 2021-01-08 11:46 GMT, Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> wrote:
> >>Free software is a privilege, as it is.  It requires a lot of
> >>knowledge about computing praxis and culture, internet culture, legal
> >>stuff, and politics.
> > How privilege? I don't see how is free software privilege. Not for
> > me. It should be basic human right for users to have control of their
> > data, and not to let other companies or individuals control my data.
> 
> That’s what a privileged person would say.  E.g., I’m an ethnically
> Turkish guy in Turkey.  I look Turkish, I speak Standard Turkish with
> flawless mid-upper class Istanbulite accent, I’m a cisgender and
> heterosexual male.  And I’m highly educated individual with a family
> backing his higher ed adventure.  This means I don’t get stopped and
> searched, I don’t get harassed on the street, I don’t need to be afraid
> of the police, that I won’t be arrested or attacked for what language I
> speak, I won’t be looked down upon, and won’t have to worry about a lot
> of things women, LGBTQ+, and non-Turkish ethnicities will have to worry
> about.  There’s a whole host of experiences that I will never have to
> get to know in person just because who I am.  That’s how privilege
> works.  It has you live in a safe, protective bubble.  And it blurs the
> vision of the outer world.

Yes, it sounds like a privilege in a suppressive society. But that
should not be subject here.

> Free software is a privilege if you don’t have the time to learn a whole
> new culture.

"Privilege" is special advantage or immunity or benefit not enjoyed by
all. Because that free software is accessible and downloadable and can
be enjoyed by all people who wish, that is why I do not put it in
category of privileges.

You need not learn any new culture. All what you do is you purchase
computer with free software installed and you learn software. There is
no new culture to learn that is bound to that software.

As you discover on your way of learning what it is, maybe you feel to
wish to contribute back so you maybe file issues about software or
program pieces or whole software yourself. But majority people will
just find it useful for their life and business.

> Free software is a privilege if your hardware can’t run it and you
> don’t have the money to buy stuff that does (for most people even a
> dongle is a serious investment).

If you be practical and tell me what does not run and which device
does not work, then maybe I find a workaround for you.

So far I have installed Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre on many computers,
each computer works just fine. By chance I used mostly Lenovo
Thinkpad, but also Fujitsu, HP, and similar.

Major problem is when WiFi does not work. But because those computers
are used in a country where Internet anyway comes over mobile phone,
so we just connect mobile phone to notebook and receive Internet by
USB tethering.

Same mobile phone can connect to local WiFi and share connection by
USB tethering to notebook.

Notebooks I have purchased mostly for average price of US $200, and
mobile phone for 70 euro in Germany.

Better solution would be using Lenovo Thinkpads as described on
https://www.libreboot.org and flash BIOS to have fully free
computer. If there is problem with WiFi, a dongle or replaced chip
would be necessary.

You are right that things do not go that easy. But they can go easy if
at the time point of a purchase of computer user purchases computer
that does work with free software. That is what I am doing now and
these months, I choose particular hardware that is free.

> Free software is a privilege if you don’t get to make decisions
> about what software to use.

As employee, a person already decided to submit oneself to specific
requirements of employer, so you could maybe influence employer and
present free software as such is used also in US government, see
https://code.gov and you could also present European use cases where
free software is promoted to be used in governments.

Those programmers who do understand importance of free software, they
find themselves in such environments to produce or work with free
software. There are so many free software companies as well. So it is
matter of decision, what one wants to do from ground up.

Like a musician who says I wish to play guitar but not piano, if that
is first decision, musician may keep a guitar all life long.

Personally I am interacting with many people and we have set of
instructions which free software to use, and how to liberate devices
from spying proprietary software. Those people who use iPhone are not
asked to cease using iPhone personally. They are asked to purchase or
acquire separate device that will run free software. We purchase for
them. Staff members are not even asked if they use proprietary or not,
it is irrelevant what they personally do, but in team communication we
use free software. In general we do not tackle much the subject of
what is free software. They learn about 4 freedoms and that is all,
most of times that is not where their attention will be, as we wish to
accomplish tasks. So using free software is in my business case rather
useful than ideological.

Just like mine company, there are many other companies that will work
with people with free software. I know that Germany has many of such
companies. 

> Free software is a privilege if a clan of so-called software freedom
> advocates are censoring vital information because they happened to
> like so, saying nonsense like:
> 
> > We have fully free software that need not ever interact or cooperate
> > with non free.

I did not say or mean that you personally cannot interact. I have said
that it need not interact as it is integrated operating system.

No vital information is censored by that statement of mine. Neither I
am member of a "clan" and I do not know why you mention that. 

> This might be partially true for a software developer working only
> on free software, but it’s a privileged position because very little
> people have the chance to learn enough to do that and an even little
> opportunities exist for those who do put in the time.

If you would be more practical, I could help you. Tell me your
specific purpose or specific need. That is what we do here, we help
people find free software.

One time I had a huge need for free software to measure stock piles. I
was searching for days for a solution and then I found
http://cloudcompare.org/ and that is one practical use case where I
had troubles finding free software for specific purpose.

So provide a specific use case, what exactly you wish to solve? Then I
will look if there exists free software solution.

> Meanwhile the rest of us plebeians have to make Zoom work on our
> computers, use sub-optimal hardware, and figure things on our own.
> All the while the likes of you see themselves entitled to judge the
> morality of our choices and obligations.

If anybody says to me to have Skype, they take it maybe for granted
that I will put proprietary software on computer, so I tell them
clearly that we do not use third party servers to submit our
information over them and I tell them that we use our own servers and
so we recommed Mumble speech server for conversation over distances.

Zoom is proprietary, and so we tell them about security issues with
Zoom. It is matter of choice for me personally.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/06/05/zooms-security-nightmare-just-got-worse-but-heres-the-reality/?sh=12861f7e2131

I do understand that people have troubles handling communication and
that we are as people in different societies and in different
boundaries. And then in the end it looks like a Matrix movie, you are
in a programmed society where you cannot easily liberate yourself. So
it may seem from viewpoint of many people difficult like you say.

It depends probably of how person found about the free software from
begin of learning about computing. 

> >>Most users of software _cannot_ avoid non-free software.
> > Whoever is informed well and decides so themselves can switch to fully
> > free software. People make decisions on their own.
> 
> No.  If you have to use Zoom for your classes or meetings, you have to.
> If you need to use WhatsApp, you have to.  Nobody but a very small
> amount of people are free in making these decisions.

You may.

Me as a parent of children, I can come to school and help them
switch. If a school does other activities that are not acceptable to
me personally, like teaching children some things that I do not agree
with, then I may tell them so. If school does not comply, I change the
school.

Would there be for me personally problem with Zoom, I would complain,
for the security issues mentioned.

I do not think that it is legal to demand private persons to install
some foreign software on a computer.

In general it is matter of education.

What you could do now is to provide the name of the school and
contacts of their decision makers, then we compile set of documents
and references and send to the school for their englightenment.

> > What GNU project promotes is free software. GNU never says to its
> > users to use exclusively free software [...]
> 
> If you make it hard to use non-free software one _has_ to use with free
> software they _want_ to use, this is effectively a discriminatory,
> exclusionary, and unegalitarian practice.  And it’s also anti-GNU
> because this makes it _really_ hard to suggest people that they give
> free software a try.

I cannot see how GNU project is making hard for you or any other user
to use proprietary software. Nobody even asks you about that. Nobody
is looking what you do and how you use which software.

To discriminate means to treat differently, in this case, on the basis
of proprietary software.

Maybe some people individually would or could do that, but GNU project
does not do that. GNU project does not look who uses proprietary
software, that does not matter. It teaches about free software, it
does not look over your shoulder.

Every person is welcome to contribute to GNU project regardless if
they have bunch of computers running on proprietary software.

Look here: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html

> Likewise, be kind when pointing out to other contributors that they
> should stop using certain nonfree software. For their own sake, they
> ought to free themselves, but we welcome their contributions to our
> software packages even if they don't do that. So these reminders
> should be gentle and not too frequent—don't nag.

> By contrast, to suggest that others run a nonfree program opposes the
> basic principles of GNU, so it is not allowed in GNU Project
> discussions.

GNU project is against any discrimination towards people.

What GNU project discriminates is proprietary software. It excludes
proprietary software from GNU operating systems like Guix,
Trisquel. Maybe I should mention again that GNU project is about
building free operating system. As it is bunch of people who
contribute to creation of free operating systems such as Guix,
Trisquel, Parabola, etc. then whoever wish to use the systems is free,
but whoever does not wish to use them is also free.

There is no discrimination towards people based on what people use, as
that is not subject of GNU. GNU provides free operating system, but
people have their choice to take it or leave it. There is nothing
exclusionary or unegalitarian.

> And it’s also anti-GNU because this makes it _really_ hard to
> suggest people that they give free software a try.

Again, GNU project is about providing free operating system. It does
not force you do anything. Nobody minds which software you use. Nobody
even tracks who uses which software, it would be impossible.

If you wish to suggest free software to people you are free. If not,
you are also free.

> All in all, if GNU wants to be a fun little software guys group like
> 9front or OpenBSD, fine, but be honest about it.  If GNU and FSF wants
> to fight for everyone’s software freedom and will continue to ask
> donations for this cause, then this is not the way to do it.  It comes
> off as entitled and disconnected.

The distinction between OpenBSD and GNU is that GNU will not provide
non-free software components like OpenBSD. Nothing changes there. For
other thoughts in your above paragraph, I cannot comprehend it and I
do not see relation to GNU. I may say that you have got perception
from somewhere, but I do not share that perception of a GNU project.

> Today, there’s nothing that’s uniquely copyleft software, maybe except
> Emacs.

Well, I cannot share that perception as a long time user of Debian
GNU/Linux, you could verify it on their website, there are thousands
of packages that are uniquely copyleft.

> LLVM and clang is as good as GCC, coreutils is better than BSD
> userland or busybox but not by a huge margin, Zsh is by no means
> inferior to Bash, etc.

You have mentioned various free software. They are all part of total
set of free software. GNU project supports ALL free software licenses
and promotes GNU GPL as primary. Please see here:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

That is the official statement by GNU project. So all free software
licenses are welcome.

> OSes like FreeBSD are almost fully viable on desktop, and most of
> what works on GNU/Linux works there.  If copyleft and
> free-as-in-speech-not-beer is to remain relevant in the future, this
> whole attitude needs to change.

Well you are asking GNU project to change its stance on free
software. That is very unlikely to happen as it goes against its core
principle or founding principle.

But what you can do is to open up your project with different set of
principles and run your own organization of people. Everybody is free
and entitled to it.

FreeBSD is not a fully free OS and is thus not endorsed as such by the
FSF. One new and interesting project will be non-GNU
Hyperbola/BSD-libre system https://www.hyperbola.info where they will
provide fully free BSD-based but mostly non-GNU free operating system,
where the OpenBSD kernel will be re-published under GNU GPL license
and where systemsoftware will conform to GNU GPL.

That will become a fully free BSD-like operating system. Until then,
we have not get such as NetBSD/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/DragonflyBSD still do
not qualify fully as such due to inclusion of various proprietary
blobs. I may be mistaken, but that is what I know until now.

> > Your statements are too general and I do not see how they relate.
> 
> You do not _want_ to see, FTFY.  There’s a reason I changed the subject
> line.  But all in all, to satisfy your unprecedented love for specific
> things and your dislike of attempting to make that last little
> connection: your attack on repology.el comes from a privileged
> position

I have no privileged position. In fact I am not developer in GNU
project, and speak only what I personally find that should be aligned
with GNU. So sorry, you are mistaken there.

Further, there is no attack on repology.el as a package, I have
verified its features and some are useful. It just does not align with
GNU project principles so I said it should not be in GNU ELPA.

But put it somewhere else, everybody is free to put it on other
servers.

> and the condemnation of even linking to information regarding non-free
> software in the form of repology.org, going so far as to suggesting
> stealing these people’s work and creating a knock-off
> ‘frepology.org’

We do not link in GNU project to non-free software. Review the GNU.org
website. You just need to learn more about what is GNU.

When software is free, like repology.org software is free, do you
allow people to discuss possibility of forking software and providing
only a subset of packages, for example those being fully free?

If you know what is free software, then please be aware that such
possibility exists, even though is unlikely in my opinion.

It is not "stealing" these people's work. It is re-using software. But
if we wish to use "stealing" term we would say that rather in funny
manner. It should be clear that free software is re-used.

So that is where you came and made objections against a fundamental
free software principle.

> comes from a privileged, exclusionary, and backwards position.  This
> whole thing represents a self-destructive anti-free-software stance
> that is detrimental to the quest for software freedom as a right for
> all humans, and only caters to the handful FOSS zealots (one of
> which is I) who have put years into learning this whole travesty of
> an online culture and surrounding issues.

I wish to comprehend everything but I cannot. There are no privileges
that I see. Nothing is exclusionary, nobody is discriminated to use
any kind of software, and there is nothing "backwards". Fundamental
principle of GNU is that it is about creation of free software
system. Some policies say that we shall not legitimize proprietary
software. That is why GNU project should not provide hyperlinks or
software descriptions in GNU EMACS. GNU ELPA is part of GNU Emacs. It
is matter what GNU project presents to users and how is GNU project
teaching and directing users, not what users are doing themselves.

So there is no self-destructive anti-free-software stance. 

Jean

Re: frepology.org

[Jean Louis]

* Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> [2021-01-09 09:46]:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
> Would someone like to volunteer to set up frepology.org?

I would have no problem with setting it up as long as repology.org
provides all pieces of free software available. It seem to be the case.

Jean

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: bugs@gnu.support, arthur.miller@live.com, ams@gnu.org,
> 	dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2021 01:35:54 -0500
> 
> So if using repology.org helps you work on Emacs, by all means use it.
> (Did anyone here say you shouldn't?)
> 
> But we shouldn't refer _the public_ to repology.org.

I'm part of that public, and so are the other GNU maintainers.  I see
no reason why I should know about repology.org, but other Emacs users
cannot.

Your words could also be interpreted to mean that every single user of
Emacs can know about repology.org, but all of them together shouldn't.
That interpretation sounds very strange and even absurd to me, but the
way you (and others) worded this rule speaks for itself.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2021 01:35:54 -0500
> Cc: emacs-tangents@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support, ulm@gentoo.org, ams@gnu.org,
>  arthur.miller@live.com, dgutov@yandex.ru
> 
>   > Just saying that a package exists and showing where its repository is
>   > etc. is nowhere near promotion, it's simply information.
> 
> Please see the node References in the GNU Coding Standards for an
> explanation of why informing people that an obscure package exists is
> a form of promoting it.

As I explained elsewhere, I think this part of GSoC is a mistake and
should be fixed.  It goes too far in its desire to avoid promoting
non-free software, and that extremism in this case harms our own
cause.  The wording should be more balanced, or we should have some
qualifications in the text to the effect that neutral information
about software packages is not promotion.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: dgutov@yandex.ru, eliz@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support,
> 	arthur.miller@live.com, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2021 01:37:10 -0500
> 
> The issue about repology.org is not about that.  It is whether we
> should tell the public about its existence, for instance by including
> in Emacs a program specifically aimed at that site.

I'm part of that public, so if you don't tell me about that site, I
won't know about it.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: eliz@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support, arthur.miller@live.com,
> 	dgutov@yandex.ru, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2021 01:37:13 -0500
> 
>   >    You are saying those programs are breaking the law?
> 
>   > The GNU project policy is to not legitimizes non-free software, what
>   > the law says is irrelevant here.  So I fail to see what law has to do
>   > with anything.
> 
> I think there is a linguistic misunderstanding here.  "Legitimate" can
> mean "legitimate according to the law" or "legitimate according to
> standards of right and wrong".  I generally use it in the latter
> sense, and I think you do too.  Maybe Eli applied the first
> interpretation.

We have a rule not to use "illegal" for anything that isn't a
violation of the law, and we have that rule for a good reason.  Why
should we treat "legitimize" any differently? it has the same issue.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: bugs@gnu.support, emacs-tangents@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org,
> 	ams@gnu.org, arthur.miller@live.com, dgutov@yandex.ru
> Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2021 01:41:21 -0500
> 
>   > I want help them because I don't see how these references cause any
>   > damage to the Free Software cause.  Promoting non-free software and
>   > inviting users to use it is indeed against our cause, but just telling
>   > where it's stored isn't.
> 
> Telling people that the package _exists_ is what we want to avoid.

I'm quite sure this is a misguided effort.  For example, there's no
reason not to tell them it exists, if you at the same time tell them
it's non-free and urge them to use a free replacement instead.  Thus,
the urge to avoid divulging this information is not absolute, and we
should talk about when it's okay and when it isn't, instead of flatly
refusing to divulge the information as an absolute principle.

>   > I don't think the GNU project is about concealing information.  I hope
>   > it isn't.
> 
> The information is available to the public without our help, so
> we are not concealing it.  But we have no obligation to go out
> of our way to spread the word.

Having a single package that works with a single site is a far cry
from going out of our way.  Let's not exaggerate, please.

>   > Not mentioning a program does nothing towards eliminating it,
> 
> Actually it does, sometimes.  If we avoid mentioning a program we
> avoid recruiting more users for it.

That's an assumption, and I don't think it's true in this era of
abundance of information.

> That can eventually contribute to its elimination.

That's another assumption, which I think is even less true.

I could argue the opposite: by not mentioning such a program we leave
the field to those who will promote it and lure users to use it.
Whereas if we do mention it and say that it's non-free or has other
issues (like spying on its users) we allow the users to make better
decisions regarding its use.

> The point is, it avoids leading people to use that program.

But it does that badly, if it ever does.

> A nonfree program denies freedom to its users.  If we lead a person
> to use the nonfree program, we lead per to surrender freedom to it.
> Therefore we try to avoid that.

I'm not arguing for leading people towards using such programs.  I'm
saying that pretending they don't exist is a very inefficient
strategy, to say the least, towards the goal of leading users away
from them.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: ams@gnu.org, eliz@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support,
> 	arthur.miller@live.com, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2021 01:41:30 -0500
> 
>   > If you are making an emphasis on never mentioning "wrong" programs, you 
>   > make a conscious choice toward ignoring them, as opposed to studying 
>   > them and overtaking them.
> 
> Of course.  We intentionally, specifically, avoid mentioning obscure
> nonfree programs as options to be used.

Providing information about a program is not "using" that program.

> (We may mention them to condemn them.)

So there _are_ situations where mentioning such packages is okay.
repology.org is a site that would allow us do that, by providing the
information we need to use for the decision of whether they should or
shouldn't be condemned.  Therefore, I conclude that repology.org does
a job that is useful for us, and we shouldn't refrain from using that
site, definitely not as a dogmatic postulate some people here
presented.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 09.01.2021 08:34, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>    > > If the goal of the GNU project is to eliminate non-free software, why
> 
>    > Eliminate it by ignoring it, I take it.
> 
> You have misrepresented one of the secondary things we do
> while denying all the rest.  The only point that expresses
> is your hostility, and that harms our discussion here.

This is humor. Sarcasm may be the lowest form, but there's little left 
that I can use to underline the imbalance in your collective position.

And consider that this is exactly how it looks to a lot of people in our 
community. Which would be a valuable piece of info if you care about the 
said community and GNU's perception in it.

I suppose Eli conveyed the same point better in a more recent email, 
though, in a language that could be closer to your line of thinking.

> Please pay attention to the Kind Communications Guidelines,
> so you can express your recommendations in ways that contribute
> to our work rather than hampering it.

Have you considered that condemning fellow FLOSS projects as "promoting 
proprietary software" is unkind? One could even call it libel.

I get it that it might be hard for you to reverse what seems to be a 
decades-long policy, but you could at least ask Alfred and Jean to tone 
the rhetoric down a bit. To keep our discussions more constructive.

Sv: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[arthur miller]

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But why?

How do you really imagin 'not-ignoring' something but never mentioning it? Are you going to secretely at home study it in some way bet never telling anyone? In that case you are buildin g a stigma around it.

Are you going to give it a nickname or speak in terms of "the thing we are not supposed to talk about"? Or something similar? In that case you are working against your own case, since you will be talking about it any way but just giving it a different combination of sounds to name what you are speaking about.

Otherwise how is it supposed to work in practice to not ignore something but never not speak about it? I don't see the point. I don't think you have thought about implications of what you are proposing.
________________________________
Från: Alfred M. Szmidt <ams@gnu.org>
Skickat: den 8 januari 2021 18:22
Till: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
Kopia: eliz@gnu.org <eliz@gnu.org>; bugs@gnu.support <bugs@gnu.support>; arthur.miller@live.com <arthur.miller@live.com>; rms@gnu.org <rms@gnu.org>; ulm@gentoo.org <ulm@gentoo.org>; emacs-tangents@gnu.org <emacs-tangents@gnu.org>
Ämne: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

   > If the goal of the GNU project is to eliminate non-free software,
   > why

   Eliminate it by ignoring it, I take it.

Not mentioning a program isn't the same as ignoring its existance.

   You might also want to look into the origins of GNU.

It has been like this since the GNU project began.

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Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Thus, whether I personally can access that site is immaterial.  I
  > don't need your, or anybody's, permission to do whatever I want with
  > my systems.

I think we all agree on that.

  >   Refusal to make this, or any other package that has the
  > similar audacity of showing information about software in a completely
  > neutral way, to be available from GNU ELPA diminishes from the
  > community, and thus hurts me in my effort to help the community
  > members to enjoy software freedom.

That is a different issue -- related by different.  It raises other
ethical issues that do not arise in anyone's personal activities.
There are many reasons we might not put a package into GNU ELPA
even though it is sometimes useful for people.

I will write to you about this privately on Monday.  Tomorrow I have
an all-day meeting.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Finding the facts about these components is the bread and butter of
  > every GNU maintainer for a more-or-less complex GNU package.

That's a valid point.  It is useful to be able to find out whether
package P is free or not.

Is that the main reason you use repology?

                                                                  Not
  > being able to do this part of my job with GNU-endorsed free software
  > is a major blow.

On Monday could you explain that to me?  It isn't obvious.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Sv: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[arthur miller]

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Again how did you think this will work in practice?

What you are effectively saying is that GNU software can not mention non-GNJ software and can not be used to read/find or in any way interact with non GNU software.
Thus Eli or anyone else can not use any piece of GNU software to read or interact with non free software since non free software can't even be mentioned by GNU software. If effect Eli would have to use non-free software to find information about non-free software.

I am not sure you really mean it yourself that way of if you are aware of what you are saying.

You are limit GNU software to be an isolated island.
________________________________
Från: Alfred M. Szmidt <ams@gnu.org>
Skickat: den 8 januari 2021 18:22
Till: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
Kopia: dgutov@yandex.ru <dgutov@yandex.ru>; bugs@gnu.support <bugs@gnu.support>; arthur.miller@live.com <arthur.miller@live.com>; rms@gnu.org <rms@gnu.org>; ulm@gentoo.org <ulm@gentoo.org>; emacs-tangents@gnu.org <emacs-tangents@gnu.org>
Ämne: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el


   > From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
   > Cc: eliz@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support, arthur.miller@live.com,
   >     rms@gnu.org, ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
   > Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2021 16:07:13 -0500
   >
   >    > You are exagerating.  Nobody is saying don't do research, I'm quite
   >    > sure you are capable of finding that information on your own.  But it
   >    > is a different thing for GNU do provide that information for you.
   >
   >    But GNU software shouldn't help me in research?
   >
   > In the research of non-free software, obviously no.

   And that is a serious problem, because GNU maintainers need to do that
   quite frequently, as part of their job they do for GNU.

As a GNU maintainer you can use other venues to find that information,
again nobody is stopping _you_.  But the GNU _project_ or GNU
_software_ is not there to help you find non-free software.

I do not understand what is so confusing here, how you as a person (in
the capacity of a mainainter or not) wish to figure out stuff and what
the GNU project links to are two entierly orthogonal issues.

Its like asking why the GNU project doesn't provide information about
finding good polka candy recipies, its outside the scope of the
project (ignoring the issue that non-free software being immoral and
unethical).

   And other software users and professionals are likely to do that as
   well, in order to study software algorithms and implementations.  Let
   me remind you that (AFAIK) one of the main reasons for starting GNU
   was the inability to share ideas about software design and
   implementation, due to commercial entities' enforcement of a system
   where showing the code was prohibited.  It would be ironic if the GNU
   project prevented its followers from exercising the same freedom, by
   denying us the information about where to find that source code to
   begin with.

It doesn't prevent anyone from doing any kind of research, it is just
not the place for GNU to help you in doing said research.  There have
been lists (e.g., the high priority list) of functionality which is
lacking on free operating systems -- sometimes even mentioning very
well known non-free software we (the project) wishes to replace.

But when the program is unknown, one can simply list the features one
wishes a program to have and not give it the extra promotion.  Since
if we say that a program has no free software counter part, it would
be quite normal for someone to go decide that they will install the
non-free program until such a day.  And that would be working against
the goal.


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Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I'm quite sure this is a misguided effort.  For example, there's no
  > reason not to tell them it exists, if you at the same time tell them
  > it's non-free and urge them to use a free replacement instead.

It depends who we're talling.  If we are informing someone who is a
committed free software activist, someone who will surely reject it
given this information, then telling per is harmless.

Otherwise, the question is no so simple.

That leaves a lot to say about the other issues raised.
I can't do it today.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Sv: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[arthur miller]

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Yes please. That is one part of the text I said in one mail I have problems with. I think it leads into dogmatism of kind we are experiencing here.
________________________________
Från: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
Skickat: den 9 januari 2021 09:39
Till: rms@gnu.org <rms@gnu.org>
Kopia: emacs-tangents@gnu.org <emacs-tangents@gnu.org>; bugs@gnu.support <bugs@gnu.support>; ulm@gentoo.org <ulm@gentoo.org>; ams@gnu.org <ams@gnu.org>; arthur.miller@live.com <arthur.miller@live.com>; dgutov@yandex.ru <dgutov@yandex.ru>
Ämne: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2021 01:35:54 -0500
> Cc: emacs-tangents@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support, ulm@gentoo.org, ams@gnu.org,
>  arthur.miller@live.com, dgutov@yandex.ru
>
>   > Just saying that a package exists and showing where its repository is
>   > etc. is nowhere near promotion, it's simply information.
>
> Please see the node References in the GNU Coding Standards for an
> explanation of why informing people that an obscure package exists is
> a form of promoting it.

As I explained elsewhere, I think this part of GSoC is a mistake and
should be fixed.  It goes too far in its desire to avoid promoting
non-free software, and that extremism in this case harms our own
cause.  The wording should be more balanced, or we should have some
qualifications in the text to the effect that neutral information
about software packages is not promotion.

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Sv: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[arthur miller]

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"Researching nonfree software is usually a bad thing to do, because
people generally do it so as to use or develop nonfree software.  On
the other hand, if it is to help replace those nonfree programs, that
is a good thing."

Knifes are bad thing because they are used to hurt people. But if they
are used to slice bread and potatoes, that is a good thing.

A tool has no moral value in itself. Not even an action The moral value
is in the eye of beholder. (I think it was D. Hume first).

Sounds it would be very difficult for any GNU developer to replace
a feature in or entire non-free appliction if they are not allowed to
even mention that application or use it etc.

I think there is an instrinsical value in using Free software. I don't
think people need prohibitions to achieve transition toward
openess. I see general tendency toward openess in the society.

However, I believe human psychology must be taken into consi-
deration for success of any project of life-style matter, which I
perceive GNU is. I believe that refusal to not even mention by name
or a reference to non-free software will sound rather extreme to
many people, and might even turn away some. It is also practially
less useful than to be able to refer to something in order to at
least condemn it or study it.

I believe that it is a much better strategy to offer people a better
choice.
________________________________
Från: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
Skickat: den 9 januari 2021 07:37
Till: Alfred M. Szmidt <ams@gnu.org>
Kopia: dgutov@yandex.ru <dgutov@yandex.ru>; eliz@gnu.org <eliz@gnu.org>; bugs@gnu.support <bugs@gnu.support>; arthur.miller@live.com <arthur.miller@live.com>; ulm@gentoo.org <ulm@gentoo.org>; emacs-tangents@gnu.org <emacs-tangents@gnu.org>
Ämne: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  >    > You are exagerating.  Nobody is saying don't do research, I'm quite
  >    > sure you are capable of finding that information on your own.  But it
  >    > is a different thing for GNU do provide that information for you.

  >    But GNU software shouldn't help me in research?

  > In the research of non-free software, obviously no.

I think that oversimplifies the situation.

You can use GNU software to do anything.  You can use IceCat to read
about nonfree programs on the web, look at their repos on GitHub, look
at info about them in repology.org -- anything at all.  You can use GCC
to compile them, too.

Researching nonfree software is usually a bad thing to do, because
people generally do it so as to use or develop nonfree software.  On
the other hand, if it is to help replace those nonfree programs, that
is a good thing.

GNU programs don't try to judge the morality of whatever you are
doing.  They do what you command.

The issue about repology.org is not about that.  It is whether we
should tell the public about its existence, for instance by including
in Emacs a program specifically aimed at that site.



--
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)



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Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Devin Prater]

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As a blind person, I feel that my ideas could help diversify things a
bit. Replies inline:

On 1/8/21 1:17 PM, Göktuğ Kayaalp wrote:
> On 2021-01-08 11:46 GMT, Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> wrote:
>>> Free software is a privilege, as it is.  It requires a lot of
>>> knowledge about computing praxis and culture, internet culture, legal
>>> stuff, and politics.
>> How privilege? I don't see how is free software privilege. Not for
>> me. It should be basic human right for users to have control of their
>> data, and not to let other companies or individuals control my data.

I am a completely blind person, with 0.2% of Python programming
knowledge. I switched to Linux (again) to see how accessibility has
progressed in the two years since I'd tried it last. I can tell you that
while privileged sighted people go on and on about KDE and how awesome
it is, and Gnome, I can barely use either distribution. KDE is making
progress, but for now only the default launcher will be usable... in the
next version to be released. Gnome used to be great, but now even its
Control Center is just awful to use with Orca,
<https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/introduction.html.en> the
screen reader for graphical desktops.


Now, GTK4 *says* it has accessibility fixes
<https://blog.gtk.org/2020/10/21/accessibility-in-gtk-4/>. And I hope
so; it's not in stable Arch repos yet so I've not tried it. However,
even the latest release of Gnome's Control Center is slightly more
accessible, yes, but it appears to me as if everything is in one *long*
list; every single item is in tab order, and that's just a mess. QT has
gotten better; indeed, Mumble is one of the most usable QT programs I've
come across.


You may then say, well what about the CLI? Sure, it's okay, until you
get into TUI programs that use ascii graphics, or programs that redraw
the whole screen for just a simple update. The non-uniformity of TUI
programs makes them quite hard to use in many cases. There are some
programs that are pretty good, like Emacs (with Emacspeak) and Mutt, so
not all is bad there.


It just feels so frustrating when FOSS folks talk about how inclusive
FOSS is, how open and inviting it is, and then I try a Discord GTK
client and find that it's nearly useless because of no list items being
labeled correctly. And yes, I do intend to report the bugs and problems
I find, but I may be ignored, or given the "oh it's someone else's
fault" like with the Manjaro installer. And then there's Gnu's own
Accessibility Statement
<https://www.gnu.org/accessibility/accessibility.en.html>, which has a
statistic from 2005, and reads as if it were updated ten or more years
ago, as Silverlight and Adobe Flash haven't been a big issue in many
years now, as HTML5 has superseded flash at least. I know that Gnu may
have a shortage of documentation writers, and I could at least help with
editing, but the lack of up-to-date information, and the favoring of
Gnome as a good accessibility standard, is just another slap in the face
for blind people who run across this and see how out-of-date the
information is.


> {snip}
> Free software is a privilege if you don’t have the time to learn a whole
> new culture.  Free software is a privilege if your hardware can’t run
> it and you don’t have the money to buy stuff that does (for most people
> even a dongle is a serious investment).  Free software is a privilege if
> you don’t get to make decisions about what software to use.  Free
> software is a privilege if a clan of so-called software freedom
> advocates are censoring vital information because they happened to like
> so, saying nonsense like:
>
>> We have fully free software that need not ever interact or cooperate
>> with non free.
> This might be partially true for a software developer working only on
> free software, but it’s a privileged position because very little people
> have the chance to learn enough to do that and an even little
> opportunities exist for those who do put in the time.
>
> Meanwhile the rest of us plebeians have to make Zoom work on our
> computers, use sub-optimal hardware, and figure things on our own.
> All the while the likes of you see themselves entitled to judge the
> morality of our choices and obligations.

This is even more true for people with disabilities. Do you know what
most blind people use? Windows (7-10), because there is JAWS, a $1099
screen reader that is basically a bunch of scripts to work with Windows'
accessibility API and massage the data, all taped together and packaged
with high quality voices. Now you may say: "Well just install Linux."
Sure, but the bios are completely visual, and so is the boot manager. We
can get around this by using sighted family members, if we have them, or
proprietary "sighted help" services like AIRA <https://aira.io/>

  or Be My Eyes <https://www.bemyeyes.com/>. But we want to do this with
open source tools right? ... There's no other choice that I can think
of, and this is simply booting the Linux disk. This is worked around
with single-board computers, where the SD Card is the OS disk, and only
requires flashing the OS which can be done by... well... a non-free OS
like Windows. This can also be worked around by buying a computer with
Linux already installed, but that will likely come with Ubuntu, which
uses Gnome, which as stated earlier, isn't the most accessible option.


Windows  also has NVDA (nonvisual Desktop Access), which is open source.
It is a very well complete screen reader, with community-maintained
plugins (addons) for it that extend it immensely, with more voice
options and application support.


I say all this to setup what blind people, in the "blind community", are
expected to work with. All of our specialty software, from braille
translation to audio games, are on Windows. This has been worked around
a bit, with cups-filters having a braille translation system using
Liblouis and using Wine for audio games, but we still must use Zoom,
TeamTalk (like Mumble (Mumble isn't usable with Windows screen
readers)), Microsoft Office files, PDF's, and in the case of people who
like to read, EPUB files. This may sound like general computer use, but
the hardship is compounded by the inaccessibility of some programs, like
the Gnome and Mate document viewers. Sure I can load a file, but I can't
actually read the file.


All this isn't to say that Linux isn't usable. I've used it for almost a
month now without too many major problems. Google Docs and other messy
web apps have problems with Orca, but I can read books using Nov.el
(Nov-mode) in Emacs, write in Org-mode or Libre-Office, that kind of
thing. But for how much longer? GTK4 worries me because Gnome3 isn't
very usable. I mean, when you press the Hyper key, all you hear is
"window." That's like if you pressed Hyper and a blank screen popped up,
and you had to move your mouse to even get to the content, indeed, even
the purpose of the window. Many programs, like Gedit and Gnome-Terminal,
work well enough, but even Evolution has accessibility issues with even
*reading* and *writing* email. Thunderbird is our *only* accessible GUI
email program. But I use Linux because of the workarounds I can find,
not because it's a great, accessibility-wise, operating system to use. I
love being able to get podcasts, and even Youtube channel feeds, using
GPodder, writing and reading and exploring with Emacs, listening to
audio with filters and enhancement plugins with Audacious, that kind of
thing. But there will probably always be the threat of inaccessibility
looming over my head in Linux, because volunteers don't have to adhere
to a standard; they can just make their own without accessibility
considerations. And there are enough other marginalized groups, even
though the disabled are the most marginalized, that the disabled can
easily be forgotten, especially the blind.


>>> Most software, and most of popular software is closed source.
>> I did not count to say so. But what is popular it does not matter in
>> GNU project, what matters is that we do have fully free software and
>> operating systems.
> We don’t.  Nobody has.  Maybe, as the one who attempts to deny the
> experience of billions of people, it’s kinda on you to do the counting
> there.
>
>>> Most users of software _cannot_ avoid non-free software.
>> Whoever is informed well and decides so themselves can switch to fully
>> free software. People make decisions on their own.
> No.  If you have to use Zoom for your classes or meetings, you have to.
> If you need to use WhatsApp, you have to.  Nobody but a very small
> amount of people are free in making these decisions.
>
>> GNU project is everything else but not ivory tower. Otherwise you
>> would not be able to discuss here.
> Neat little non sequitur there.  GNU opens itself to the world and asks
> everyone to back its cause so you don’t get to pick who says what
> anyways.
>
>> What GNU project promotes is free software. GNU never says to its
>> users to use exclusively free software [...]
> If you make it hard to use non-free software one _has_ to use with free
> software they _want_ to use, this is effectively a discriminatory,
> exclusionary, and unegalitarian practice.  And it’s also anti-GNU
> because this makes it _really_ hard to suggest people that they give
> free software a try.
>
>> [...] and never condemns people for using proprietary software.
> Yeah, no.
>
>
> All in all, if GNU wants to be a fun little software guys group like
> 9front or OpenBSD, fine, but be honest about it.  If GNU and FSF wants
> to fight for everyone’s software freedom and will continue to ask
> donations for this cause, then this is not the way to do it.  It comes
> off as entitled and disconnected.

They should also fight for everyone's access to their software as well,
and denounce anyone that makes software which is unable to be easily
used by the blind and other disabled groups, even if it means denouncing
Gnome, KDE, LXQT, XFCE, and other large desktop environment creators
until they understand that accessibility *is* a human rights issue, not
something that they can just sweep under the rug until some time when
there's nothing much else to do, because there will always be something
else to do. GNU and FOSS doesn't work for everyone until it works for
the least of us. I'm very glad that FOSS is coming to understand
privilege, but then there is shown arrogance about the topic, that
because Linux is open that anyone can use it well, that open source
means greatness, always, no questions asked. I tell you, that open
source does not mean accessible for those with disabilities. In many
cases, it means nonstandard-compliance, leading to inaccessibility.
Because the program has to stand out somehow, right?


I'd love to get more people into Linux. I'd love to train my students on
using Linux. I'd love for distributions and desktop environments to be a
choice of what a user finds the most useful for them and what brings
them the most productivity, instead of "you have to go with Mate because
that's the only one that's usable." I'd love to bring Linux into my
workplace and give concrete, real-world examples of how Linux helps me
get my job done quickly and productively. I'd love to bring up Linux to
even a few of the 70% of blind people who are unemployed, giving them
great resources for learning how to code and groups that would welcome
them and bring them into a team that can help them code and get into a
well-paying organization, or even code programs for themselves and
others, or even just understand how their computer works enough to
provide tech support. Right now, though, I can't. And until this
attitude of FOSS being mightily open and welcoming, and that the right
way of doing things is known, and no opposition is taken seriously, and
open to all, changes to a more humble and dedicated attitude of
listening to actual people with disabilities, we won't get there.


> Today, there’s nothing that’s uniquely copyleft software, maybe except
> Emacs.  LLVM and clang is as good as GCC, coreutils is better than BSD
> userland or busybox but not by a huge margin, Zsh is by no means
> inferior to Bash, etc.  OSes like FreeBSD are almost fully viable on
> desktop, and most of what works on GNU/Linux works there.  If copyleft
> and free-as-in-speech-not-beer is to remain relevant in the future, this
> whole attitude needs to change.
>
>> Your statements are too general and I do not see how they relate.
> You do not _want_ to see, FTFY.  There’s a reason I changed the subject
> line.  But all in all, to satisfy your unprecedented love for specific
> things and your dislike of attempting to make that last little
> connection: your attack on repology.el comes from a privileged position
> and the condemnation of even linking to information regarding non-free
> software in the form of repology.org, going so far as to suggesting
> stealing these people’s work and creating a knock-off ‘frepology.org’
> comes from a privileged, exclusionary, and backwards position.  This
> whole thing represents a self-destructive anti-free-software stance that
> is detrimental to the quest for software freedom as a right for all
> humans, and only caters to the handful FOSS zealots (one of which is I)
> who have put years into learning this whole travesty of an online
> culture and surrounding issues.
>
> As someone who believes in software freedom as a general good for human
> society I think you and the likes of you are hurting this endeavour.
>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 17069 bytes --]

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > What you are effectively saying is that GNU software can not
  > mention non-GNJ software and can not be used to read/find or in
  > any way interact with non GNU software.

That is very different from what I said.  So different that I don't
see how to try to correct the misunderstanding.

  > Thus Eli or anyone else can not use any piece of GNU software to
  > read or interact with non free software since non free software
  > can't even be mentioned by GNU software.

Have you ever visited a web site that is not mentioned in your
browser's documentation or in Emacs?  I would expect you have.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > How do you really imagin 'not-ignoring' something but never
  > mentioning it? Are you going to secretely at home study it in some
  > way bet never telling anyone? In that case you are buildin g a
  > stigma around it.

I think you're arguing against a purely theoretical paradox.
If you look at the References node, and read what we actually do,
you'll see that it is practical and clear.

You might still disagree with it, but at least you'll be disagreeing
with something real.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > You have misrepresented one of the secondary things we do
  > > while denying all the rest.  The only point that expresses
  > > is your hostility, and that harms our discussion here.

  > This is humor. Sarcasm may be the lowest form, but there's little left 
  > that I can use to underline the imbalance in your collective position.

To convince me, you have to show you understand what I'm saying, then point
out a problem so I can agree it is a problem.  Bludgeoning me with sarcasm
only vents your hostility, and that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

I am asking various people to be less strident, not only you.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: frepology.org

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > Would someone like to volunteer to set up frepology.org?

  > I would have no problem with setting it up as long as repology.org
  > provides all pieces of free software available. It seem to be the case.

Would you, please?  I think that would resolve some tensions now.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > What you are effectively saying is that GNU software can not
>   > mention non-GNJ software and can not be used to read/find or in
>   > any way interact with non GNU software.
>
> That is very different from what I said.  So different that I don't
> see how to try to correct the misunderstanding.
I think it was an answer of Alfred I was quated there, not yours.
I don't know what of your words you are referring to.

>   > Thus Eli or anyone else can not use any piece of GNU software to
>   > read or interact with non free software since non free software
>   > can't even be mentioned by GNU software.
>
> Have you ever visited a web site that is not mentioned in your
> browser's documentation or in Emacs?  I would expect you have.

I don't understand how is that an argument for this discussion? With all
the respect to you.

If today's web browser do not conform to the GNU standard as
(mis)interpreted by some hard-core people here, than those browser's do
not follow GNU guidelines. I am not sure what they should do to actually
conform to that point 8. of guidelines if they are not to mention or
display sites that refer to non-free software. If they are to conform to
the GNU guidelines (as of current) they should not render those sites
(or fetch them).

The point: consider repology.el to be just another browser; I don't see
what would be difference if someone opens repology.org in Emacs or in
Firefox.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > How do you really imagin 'not-ignoring' something but never
>   > mentioning it? Are you going to secretely at home study it in some
>   > way bet never telling anyone? In that case you are buildin g a
>   > stigma around it.
>
> I think you're arguing against a purely theoretical paradox.

Maybe, I am not 100%, I am just trying to reason about the issue.

I think it would indeed be a theoretical paradox only, unless some
people didn't interpreted the guidelines so strictly that it not become
a practical issue. I think the guidelines should be re-worked slightly.

> If you look at the References node, and read what we actually do,
> you'll see that it is practical and clear.

To be sure we speak about same text I'll paste a link:

https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/References.html

> You might still disagree with it, but at least you'll be disagreeing
> with something real.

I have red them before, a few days ago too. I don't disagree with them
in principle; I just think there are some slight problems with the text;
As I understand the goal of the text is to ensure GNU is not actively
promoting non-free software, which I completely support and agree.

I think the problem at hand here is how we, or some people, define
actively promoting something. Is a mere reference to existence a
promotion of something?

Remember your email about renaming Emacs repo from master to main, it
was a week or two ago. You wrote something about words and meaning, I
don't have the link to it now, so I can cite you, but I think same
reasoning applies here.

For the theoretical paradox: I am not sure if it is just a paradox.

We should always be very careful when we encounter a paradox. Paradoxes
does not exist in nature. When we see something as a paradox the problem
is always in our understanding of the nature (mathematical, physical,
philosophical, etc) or imperfection of human interpretaion of the world.

The problem here is that in philosophical issues (which I think this is:
an ethical question); we have to be consistent. We can't have a rule
that applies and not applies; a fact can not be truth and false at same
time. Thus if we are going to have a rule that guide our actions we need
to be consistent. I don't think that in real life we have such rigiourus
consistency as we can have in logics or mathematics, but for those cases
where we can't formulate such rule, we should clearly state when rule
applies. I think the paradox here arises because the text itself leaves
a little bit more for the interpretation than it should, and we have
people arguing here what is promotion and what is not.

Maybe more clear description of what is considered promoting is
needed. Maybe even taking a step back and relaxing a rule on what is
legitimate and what not.

In some previous mail you answered you had no problems with medical
hardware running non-free blobs. In order to be consistent in
philosophical sense, you should have problem with it. And if your
philosophy asks you to refuse all non-ethical (non-free software) then
you should refuse to use such machine. I don't think that is what you
suggest to anyone or would practice yourself but I think the philosophy
should maybe be a bit more clear about it.

Observe, I am just trying to reason about this. I might be wrong, so
please, I would be glad to what I understand wrong and the arguments.

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Arthur Miller]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

>>Free software is a privilege, as it is.  It requires a lot of knowledge
>>about computing praxis and culture, internet culture, legal stuff, and
>>politics.  
>
> How privilege? I don't see how is free software privilege. Not for me. It should
> be basic human right for users to have control of their data, and not to let
> other companies or individuals control my data.
You can easily exercise your right: do not use their services. It is
still free.

> Better said proprietary software is mischievous unfortunate degrading event of human history and we are working to the reverse it.
>
>>It’s fundamental and inevitable and unavoidable for free software to
>>interact and cooperate with non-free software, if such a goal is not
>>limited to the use cases of some privileged hackers.  
>
> We have fully free software that need not ever interact or cooperate with non
> free. So I don't know where you pull out that anti information. Just start with
> www.gnu.org to find software that never ever need to cooperate with proprietary
> software.
>
>
>>Most software,
>>and
>>most of popular software is closed source.  
>
> I did not count to say so. But what is popular it does not matter in GNU project, what matters is that we do have fully free software and operating systems. 
>
>>Most users of software
>>_cannot_ avoid non-free software. 
>
> Whoever is informed well and decides so themselves can switch to fully free software. People make decisions on their own.
Maybe, if all they have to do is covered by the free alternatives, which
it is not for many people and organisations. It would be good if it is
not so, but it is.

Keep repeating that everyone can choose a free alternative if they just
were is uninformed, ignorant and missleading. Best I can say: just a
wishful thinking. Unfortunately. I wish it was true myself.

> GNU project is everything else but not ivory tower. Otherwise you would not be able to discuss here.
>
>  What GNU project promotes is free software. GNU never says to its users to use
> exclusively free software and never condemns people for using proprietary
> software.
>
> I thus do not see where is problem.
>
> Your statements are too general and I do not see how they relate.
No, they are not at all. They are quite precise. If you fail to not
understand what "promote free software", "never says its users to use
exclusively free software" and "never condemns people for using
proprietary software" then the fail is completely on your side.

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > > What GNU project promotes is free software. GNU never says to its
>   > > users to use exclusively free software and never condemns people for
>   > > using proprietary software.
>
>   > Yet it maintains a blacklist of common GNU/Linux distros and labels them
>   > as "unethical", even if these distros (like Debian and Fedora) have a
>   > clear policy to exclude anything non-free from their main repositories.
>
> This is a miscommunication.  You and Jean are talking about different
> things.
It is a miscommunication, albeit on GNU project side. Not all humans have
possibility to use non-free software in all aspects of their life :-).

I think GNU project should tell people to use exclusively free software
*whenever they can*, and advice people to demand software companies to
produce free software.

As a side note, I think GNU project should make along better with non-free
world and work via other tools (actively via politics) to promote usage
and development of free software in society. 

> Jean is presenting the GNU Project's moral philosophy.  We say that
> every nonfree program is an injustice, so recommending a nonfree
> program for use is unethical.  To lead users to run it is unethical.
>
> When we say that a distro is unethical, that simply means that the
> distro contains or recommends or leads users to run nonfree software.
> Nothing other than that.
>
> It's not a personal criticism of the distro developers.  I'm confident
> that the Debian developers and the Gentoo developers are honest and
> follow their moral codes.  We don't mean to criticize them as people.
>
> We try to make this clear in gnu.org/distros.  If you see anything
> there which is not clear, please write me privately and show me the
> text you mean.
This is a bit paradoxical again. For the first, there is a slight
problem with saying that people's work is unethical, but not people
themselves. I understand what you mean, but I am afraid that a wider
audience is not that understanding. If we need to describe what we mean
with "ethical/unethical", than there is a bit of a problem
already. Maybe this wording of being ethical/non-ethical is not always
the best practial solution to achieve the goal of having free software
life. Maybe talking about offering better alternative in terms of
freedom and practical issues can be a better tool.

I am just thinking loud ...

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > No.  If you have to use Zoom for your classes or meetings, you have to.
>   > If you need to use WhatsApp, you have to.
>
> Not necessarily.  I know people who have pressured/convinced
> institutions such as schools to let them use free software instead.
> It is not easy, and only a fraction succeed -- but that is better than
> zero chance.
>
> Pkease do not exaggerate hopelessness.
>
> You are aware of many forms of mistreatment of disprivileged groups.
> Usually there are campaigns to end those patterns of mistreatment.
> Society is starting to become aware of them.
>
> Nonfree software is an injustice too.  Escaping it is not easy -- but
> our work is to make it easier and encourage people to escape.
Indeed. Well said.

> Hardly anyone recognizes this injustice, so one of our priorities is
> making people notice.  Every time I mention that I refuse to use Zoom
> or WhatsApp, it is a chance to make people aware of the issue,
> and that is progress.
>
>
>   > If you make it hard to use non-free software one _has_ to use with free
>   > software they _want_ to use, this is effectively a discriminatory,
>   > exclusionary, and unegalitarian practice.
>
> We never _make_ our programs not run on nonfree systems.
> You're attacking a straw man.
>
> Perhaps you've misunderstood what our practices are.
>
> We make our programs work with free software because that's what we
> want.  If you want to change them to interoperate with some nonfree
> program or system, you are free to do that.  We might even help
> maintain your changes, if they are easy to merge in.
I think this is the line of action that should be definitely be worked
more on.

> But we always give priority to using software in the Free World,
> on GNU.
And together with the statement above, I think the more progress could be
made if make GNU OS (Linux based) more attractive to more
people. Unfortuantely most people as you say are neither aware of the
issue not do they care for anything else but technical side of the
computing. It is sad fact, that people don't value their freedom and
privacy more, but it is a fact we have to work with nontheless.

I think if GNU OS is made more compelling for more people on
other premisses than just privacy and freedom, for example economics
in both short and long run (politics again), than it might attract
bigger grassroot which might give more inertia to GNU.

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Jean Louis]

* Devin Prater <r.d.t.prater@gmail.com> [2021-01-10 20:18]:
> As a blind person, I feel that my ideas could help diversify things a
> bit. Replies inline:

Please try the system Hypertalking within the fully free and FSF
endorsed operating system Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre from
https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:main:downloads&redirect=1#hypertalking_live_image

I hope that it may help to some blind and visually impaired users.

Jean

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > And together with the statement above, I think the more progress could be
  > made if make GNU OS (Linux based) more attractive to more
  > people.

Of course, we try to do that.  It is easier said than done.  There is
no way to do it in general -- only various ways to do a lit of it in
specific.  Those depend on volunteers who want to work on it.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > It is a miscommunication, albeit on GNU project side. Not all humans have
  > possibility to use non-free software in all aspects of their life :-).

Why argue the question?

  > I think GNU project should tell people to use exclusively free software
  > *whenever they can*,

It's possible you've been misinformed about what the GNU Project says
to the public about using software.  Have you looked at what we
actually say?  You can find it in https://gnu.org/philosophy/.

To start with, look at fsf.org/tedx,
https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html,
and https://gnu.org/philosophy/saying-no-even-once.html.

  > This is a bit paradoxical again. For the first, there is a slight
  > problem with saying that people's work is unethical, but not people
  > themselves. I understand what you mean, but I am afraid that a wider
  > audience is not that understanding.

I think it is important to be able to condemn an act without
condemning the person who does it.  Nuances like that are important.
To simplify them away would result in being too harsh on the people.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > No, they are not at all. They are quite precise. If you fail to not
  > understand what "promote free software", "never says its users to use
  > exclusively free software" and "never condemns people for using
  > proprietary software" then the fail is completely on your side.

That sentence is so nested that I am not sure what it means.  However,
I can tell you what the GNU Project says.  The GNU Project never
condemns people for using nonfree software and never tries to insist
that people must use exclusively free software.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I think the problem at hand here is how we, or some people, define
  > actively promoting something. Is a mere reference to existence a
  > promotion of something?

In some cases it is.  Spreading the word about an obscure program
is promoting it, since that information would lead some people to
use them.  Especially if you talk about the program as if people
are going to use it.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > In some previous mail you answered you had no problems with medical
  > hardware running non-free blobs. In order to be consistent in
  > philosophical sense, you should have problem with it.

But... I don't reject appliances in general for possibly having
nonfree software in them.  If the appliance doesn't talk to a network,
what's inside it is not a crucial issue, as long as it is not meant
for anyone to change it.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > The point: consider repology.el to be just another browser;

The crucial point is that it is a browser that only looks at one site,
repology.org.

                                                                I don't see
  > what would be difference if someone opens repology.org in Emacs or in
  > Firefox.

If you're using a general purpose browser, whether its in Emacs or
not, you can tell it to look at whichever site you like.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > In some previous mail you answered you had no problems with medical
>   > hardware running non-free blobs. In order to be consistent in
>   > philosophical sense, you should have problem with it.
>
> But... I don't reject appliances in general for possibly having
> nonfree software in them.  If the appliance doesn't talk to a network,

Why not? Medical hardware mostly have access to some network to store
patients data nowdays. For the philosophy part, is it clearly stated in
the text it is ok to have some non-free software in hardware?

I am reflecting on philosophical theory and moral issue at the
hand. Given the text (part 8.) it comes out from the text that 
any non free software is unethical.

I believe you are in same position as Kant about the cathegorical
imperative and the famous example of lying to the murderer at the
door. According to critics one can't lie to the murderer at the
door. According to the Kant there is no problem to lying at the door.

I personally believe that problem is how people interpret Kant's
theory. I believe that Kant interprets this as contract
between rational beings (which leads to another critique of his
theory). I think he sees a murderer as non-rational being and thus we
are not obliged to obey him, i.e. we don't need to act rationally
ourselves and can lie to him. I don't know I 

> what's inside it is not a crucial issue, as long as it is not meant
> for anyone to change it.

I don't think this is strong enough argument. Intel's blob in cpus is
not meant for anyone to change it. Should we accept it? I think you
don't accept it. So "not ment to change it" is insufficient requirement.

I am not here to play the devil's advocate, I am just trying to point
out philosophical difficulties with the issue.

I draw parallel again with Kant and cathergorical (what we always should
do) versus hypothetical (what we should do sometimes) imperative.

I am not sure how to solve that, I just personally think there are some
fundamental difficulties in the GNU philosphy that has manifested
themselves with this discussion about repology and that maybe need to be
addressed. I am not sure I can offer any better solution myself either.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > The point: consider repology.el to be just another browser;
>
> The crucial point is that it is a browser that only looks at one site,
> repology.org.
Doesn't repology.el look at one site only too?
>                                                                 I don't see
>   > what would be difference if someone opens repology.org in Emacs or in
>   > Firefox.
>
> If you're using a general purpose browser, whether its in Emacs or
> not, you can tell it to look at whichever site you like.
What is difference if I tell Emacs to look at whichever site I like?
Philosophically? Application X or application Y looking at site S. What
makes logical distinction between X and Y in this case?

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > And together with the statement above, I think the more progress could be
>   > made if make GNU OS (Linux based) more attractive to more
>   > people.
>
> Of course, we try to do that.  It is easier said than done.  There is
> no way to do it in general -- only various ways to do a lit of it in
> specific.  Those depend on volunteers who want to work on it.
Yes I know I am aware of it. I believe that as a general rule of act we
need to give people more incentive to work on Free software. This can
come from more people using free software. Which is kind of a circle,
not evil one though :-).

I am suggesting for GNU to try to work more towards giving people that
incentive. Maybe via political means, by persuading politicians and
taxpayers that they have interest to pay for development of free
software. For example if they "buy" (sponsor) development of free
software, they can use it themselves. They (taxpayers) can save money in
the long run when developers for some reason stop developing it, more
companies would have insight in the software and be able to pick up
development, contribute, etc. There are many reasons why taxpayers might
wish to invest in free software rather then in closed source
software. Not to mention personal freedom and privace as well as
guarantee that organisations, company and institutions are not spyed on
either. Openess of software is probably the only guarantee for personal
privacy which is important for any democracy and freedom. I think
general audience is not that introduced in problems about the software
and why prefer free (at least open source) software vs. closed source
software. 

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > It is a miscommunication, albeit on GNU project side. Not all humans have
>   > possibility to use non-free software in all aspects of their life :-).
>
> Why argue the question?
It is important to have the enbaling option, i.e. possibility. If a
non-swimmer sees a drowning man in a lake, it is not unethical to not
jump into the lake to save the drowning man. It is easy to be righteous
for a well fed man in a cozy home having all 

>   > I think GNU project should tell people to use exclusively free software
>   > *whenever they can*,
>
> It's possible you've been misinformed about what the GNU Project says
> to the public about using software.  Have you looked at what we
> actually say?  You can find it in https://gnu.org/philosophy/.
I haven't red everything; some. I must admit when I wrote the sentence
you quoted, I was thinking of that text (part 8.) I linked to, not of
the rest. It was the one that was the basis for the argumentation here,
so I just focused on that one.

> To start with, look at fsf.org/tedx,
I didn't know you had a ted-talk :-). Yes, I will watch it.

> https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html,
> and https://gnu.org/philosophy/saying-no-even-once.html.
>
>   > This is a bit paradoxical again. For the first, there is a slight
>   > problem with saying that people's work is unethical, but not people
>   > themselves. I understand what you mean, but I am afraid that a wider
>   > audience is not that understanding.
>
> I think it is important to be able to condemn an act without
> condemning the person who does it.  Nuances like that are important.
> To simplify them away would result in being too harsh on the people.
I think you are correct about that one. I was thinking about it more
later, and I think I was going to far there.

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > No, they are not at all. They are quite precise. If you fail to not
>   > understand what "promote free software", "never says its users to use
>   > exclusively free software" and "never condemns people for using
>   > proprietary software" then the fail is completely on your side.
>
> That sentence is so nested that I am not sure what it means.  However,

This wasn't ment to you; this was ment to J-Louise who didn't understand
meaning of Eli's sentence which in my opinion was very clear and
concise.

> I can tell you what the GNU Project says.  The GNU Project never
> condemns people for using nonfree software and never tries to insist
> that people must use exclusively free software.

I felt that some poeple does not intepret the GNU Project the same way
as you, and that this was part of the heat in this discussion.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: ams@gnu.org, dgutov@yandex.ru, eliz@gnu.org, bugs@gnu.support,
> 	ulm@gentoo.org, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2021 01:10:34 -0500
> 
>   > I think the problem at hand here is how we, or some people, define
>   > actively promoting something. Is a mere reference to existence a
>   > promotion of something?
> 
> In some cases it is.  Spreading the word about an obscure program
> is promoting it, since that information would lead some people to
> use them.

I think nowadays the information is so pervasive and so easily found
that refraining from mentioning some program or site has no real
advantages.  It does have disadvantages: for example, we let our
enemies mock us.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 12.01.2021 17:20, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> I think nowadays the information is so pervasive and so easily found
> that refraining from mentioning some program or site has no real
> advantages.  It does have disadvantages: for example, we let our
> enemies mock us.

Or we alienate people who can be our friends.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Analogies are not strong arguments about moral questions.
That's because situations which present the same kinds of factors
differ in how significant each factor is.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Privileges and practicalities [was: Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el]

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I don't think that Jean was condemning people for using nonfree
software.  I think was emphatically saying they were making a foolish
choice, a weak choice.

That's true -- but there's no use condemning people for not being
more courageous.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > If you're using a general purpose browser, whether its in Emacs or
  > > not, you can tell it to look at whichever site you like.
  > What is difference if I tell Emacs to look at whichever site I like?
  > Philosophically? Application X or application Y looking at site S. What
  > makes logical distinction between X and Y in this case?

You're arguing very hard about some issue, but I can't follow which
issue, and I don't think it is the issue I was talking about.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > But... I don't reject appliances in general for possibly having
  > > nonfree software in them.  If the appliance doesn't talk to a network,

  > Why not? Medical hardware mostly have access to some network to store
  > patients data nowdays. For the philosophy part, is it clearly stated in
  > the text it is ok to have some non-free software in hardware?

I've told you my general views on appliances with nonfree software in
them.  If you want to take a different stance, that's up to you.
I don't have time to argue about that issue this week.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> Analogies are not strong arguments about moral questions.
> That's because situations which present the same kinds of factors
> differ in how significant each factor is.

I of course agree, but I am not sure what you are aiming at here; you
didn't quote which analogy I was making. Like every other tool, an
analogy, metaphor etc, should be used in a correct way.

Re: [ELPA] New package: repology.el

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > > But... I don't reject appliances in general for possibly having
>   > > nonfree software in them.  If the appliance doesn't talk to a network,
>
>   > Why not? Medical hardware mostly have access to some network to store
>   > patients data nowdays. For the philosophy part, is it clearly stated in
>   > the text it is ok to have some non-free software in hardware?
>
> I've told you my general views on appliances with nonfree software in
> them.  If you want to take a different stance, that's up to you.
> I don't have time to argue about that issue this week.
It is not me not wanting to understand you or taking a different
stance. I am trying to analyze what you said from a
logical/philosophical view. What I am telling is that what you currently
say is leading to a contradiction, which means non consistent
philosophy.

Sure, I understand you don't feel for discussing it, nobody is obliged
to discuss anything they don't want.

Time to dial back the dialectic? [was: Re: Privileges and practicalities]

[dick]

herr Doctor,

I'd wager the hundred or so guys who identify most with GNU would, if a
referendum were taken, say that:

1. Non-free is not an injustice,

2. *Gratis* is far and away more important to our users than *libre*, and

3. Non-free software can be used without compunction to improve our own *free*
software, and in countless ways, already does.

In other words, I'll book an emission-intensive flight to the climate
conference if it means I don't have to join Greta on her toilet-less
trans-Atlantic catamaran.

I presume NonGNU Elpa was your idea, and it was the right one.  Now we just
need to take that initiative to its logical conclusion.

Re: Time to dial back the dialectic? [was: Re: Privileges and practicalities]

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: dick <dick.r.chiang@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2021 09:46:49 -0400
> Cc: emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> 
> herr Doctor,
> 
> I'd wager the hundred or so guys who identify most with GNU would, if a
> referendum were taken, say that:
> 
> 1. Non-free is not an injustice,
> 
> 2. *Gratis* is far and away more important to our users than *libre*, and
> 
> 3. Non-free software can be used without compunction to improve our own *free*
> software, and in countless ways, already does.
> 
> In other words, I'll book an emission-intensive flight to the climate
> conference if it means I don't have to join Greta on her toilet-less
> trans-Atlantic catamaran.
> 
> I presume NonGNU Elpa was your idea, and it was the right one.  Now we just
> need to take that initiative to its logical conclusion.

Please don't use GNU mailing list for arguing with our views on Free
Software; that is inappropriate.  We have a special mailing list for
such discussions: gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org.  If you want to have such
a discussion, please take it there.

Re: Time to dial back the dialectic? [was: Re: Privileges and practicalities]

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I'd wager the hundred or so guys who identify most with GNU

I often get mail from people who do support the free software
movement.  Those are the people who really "get it."

The people you're talking about do exist, but they evidently don't
support the free software movement.  We are not trying to cater to
them.  On the contrary, on the philosophical level we compete with
them.

  > I presume NonGNU Elpa was your idea, and it was the right one.

I have a feeling that you've probably misunderstood the purpose
of NonGNU ELPA, but since you have not given specifics, I can't
really tell.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)