From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Isaac David Subject: Re: MAME emulator is giving incentive to use non-free software Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2016 16:30:17 -0600 Message-ID: <1459377017.3665.0@plebeian.isacdaavid.info> References: Reply-To: Workgroup for fully free GNU/Linux distributions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: In-Reply-To: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: gnu-linux-libre-bounces+gldg-gnu-linux-libre=m.gmane.org@nongnu.org Sender: gnu-linux-libre-bounces+gldg-gnu-linux-libre=m.gmane.org@nongnu.org To: Workgroup for fully free GNU/Linux distributions Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org List-Id: guix-devel.gnu.org Hi, Parabola does ship fully free emulators for which no free games exist. At this moment the user has to opt-in for installing your-freedom_emu to block those packages, so it actually falls down somewhere between your "liberal" and "extremely liberal" categories. My view was that while useless in a 100% free environment just having them installed and inspecting their user interfaces wouldn't violate your freedom in any way. A free emulator with free dependencies wouldn't be unethical unless it recommended using proprietary software with it. However in the last few days I have seen many arguments showing there are yet more valid uses I hadn't imagined, like learning from the source code and testing portability without leaving your comfy libre OS. In a distro without unprivileged package management like Parabola an opt-in blacklist could satisfy Jean Louis' parenting concerns, but only until the point the unprivileged users determined to run non-free software learn to look for applications outside the package manager. (I lied. Parabola has unprivileged package management thanks to Guix)[1] Meanwhile other emulators and wine are completely out of the question because there's free applications for them, even though using the non-free ones is more common. Parabola documents emulators extensively in a wiki page.[2] The wiki also considers aspects such as the possibility of writing free software for free emulator platforms which currently have no free games/applications as far as it's known (i,e. whether free toolchains targeting those platforms exist). I also had a good laugh learning about free emulators that will only run on wine. [1]: https://www.parabola.nu/packages/?q=3Dguix [2]: https://wiki.parabola.nu/Emulator_licensing_issues Le mar. 29 mars 2016 =C3=A0 10:31, al=C3=ADrio eyng = a=20 =C3=A9crit : > these are the approaches i can think: > *extremely conservative (eliminating false positive errors)[1] > removing all emulators > *conservative (eliminating false positive errors)[1] > make packages/executables like game1-emulator1, game1-emulator2, ... > and not allowing direct emulator installation/execution > *liberal (avoiding false positive errors[1] and false negative=20 > errors[2]) > allowing all emulators with free games know > *extremely liberal (eliminating false negative errors)[2] > allowing all emulators >=20 > extremely liberal is naive because it just looks down in the > dependency dag, there's no reason to not look up > extremely conservative is naive because it doesn't allow completely=20 > free uses > conservative would solve the issues that originate this thread > liberal is more convenient in some cases >=20 > i consider conservative better, liberal ok, and any of the extremes=20 > unreasonable >=20 > fsdg doesn't allow extremely liberal (according to other people > interpretation), in ndiswrapper, for example: > "with one exception, all ndis drivers are nonfree--and the one free > one is a windows port of a native linux driver. so right now, this > isn't useful for anything besides using nonfree software"[3] >=20 > parabola follows extremely conservative with your-freedom_emu[4] >=20 > assuming we choose conservative; for wine, we can make guile-wine, > emacs-wine[5] and gnutls-wine[6], but remove wine >=20 > it seems there's at least one free game needing an emulator[7] >=20 > i think this is a discussion about fsdg[8] and we should discuss it at > gnu-linux-libre@nongnu.org >=20 > [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/false_positives_and_false_negatives#Fals= e_positive_error > [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/false_positives_and_false_negatives#Fals= e_negative_error > [3]https://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_th= e_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines > [4]https://www.parabola.nu/packages/libre/any/your-freedom_emu/ > [5]https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2016-03/msg01216.html > [6]https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2014-11/msg00333.html > [7]http://pineight.com/lu/ > [8]http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html >=20 =