Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[N <ng0@n0.is>]

Jesse Gibbons transcribed 3.1K bytes:
> On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 08:07:16 +0000
> N <ng0@n0.is> wrote:
> 
> 
> > As I wrote on IRC, I'm sceptic about the -uxp projects in hyperbola.
> > They can be imported here and be watched in the long-term.
> > 
> > There are a couple of problems to looks at:
> > 
> > - The committer list of uxp upstream and its hostile way to approach
> >   brand defense (been there, dealt with it off-list, but was lucky
> > enough to read the complete license exeptions before contacting them.
> I'll keep that in mind.
> 
> > look at freebsd who got shouted at in github for even daring to have
> > a public work-in-progress package and then asking).
> I'm having a bit of difficulty finding what you're talking about here.
> What are some keywords to search? I've tried "freebsd controversy" and
> "freebsd github" and "freebsd trademark" and variants, but I have not
> found anything like that.

Sorry, openbsd.
https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86
Can't remember if FreeBSD got the same problem at some point.
 
> > - The people who work on it in Hyperbola are far less than for example
> >   people paid to do the work in Firefox (or Thunderbird, though I'm
> > not sure if TB is paid for). Money matters, and I can fully
> > understand why so few people with so few patches work on the 2
> > projects in hyperbola.
> It looks like the developers at hyperbola are committing frequently to
> their icedove-uxp git repo.
> https://git.hyperbola.info:50100/software/icedove-uxp.git/log/

I have read it, and it still is nothing compared to Thunderbird, Firefox
or any Webbrowser with more than 1 person dedicated to it. My abscence of
mentioning that they regularly commit to it does not indicate that I
doubt that they commit the time they have to it.

> > Which leads me to:
> > 
> > - My experience in Guix about packaging and accepted packages is that
> > it is not only about licensing and ensuring software freedom beyond
> > what upstream intended to, but also about ensuring user security (see
> > the countless hours invested by our Icecat maintainer in backporting
> >   patches from Firefox, etc). Given that Hyperbola is an Operating
> > System, do they hold their own software accountable to the same
> > standards they check external CVEs (etc) for?
> >   With Mozilla and downstreams of Mozilla, we get at least the
> > dedication to checking for bugs and ensuring they get fixed.
> Another issue worth checking out.
> > 
> > - Decisions in Hyperbola I read which argue for why this was done are
> >   questionable from my personal point of view. It is easy to fall into
> >   the "Rust is bloat" trap. To mention it as one of the main arguments
> >   why this fork exists is odd.

Okay, and here I stop reading and replying. It's not my duty to
deliver arguments to you about languages. You miss the point about
it, and twist my words around.
 
> guix says Rust is over 200MB (which du says nearly all of it is the
> lib/rustlib directory where rust is installed), and mozilla apps worked
> fine before they had rust, so although I haven't run any benchmarks, I
> do not think calling it bloat based on its size is inaccurate.
> 
> Since bloat takes up a large amount of resources, be it RAM or CPU, it
> is good to cut out the bloat if it can make an app smaller and faster.
> Thus, if rust is bloat, it is probably good to remove it.
> 
> As for it being a main argument for the uxp packages to exist, it is a
> good idea to have a browser that uses less resources than the
> alternatives. I do not find it an odd argument at all.
> 
> If you could provide a cogent argument for keeping rust (i.e. for
> security reasons) I would be interested in looking into it. If you
> think rust is not bloat, I would be interested in your arguments to
> that end as well.
> > 
> > 
> > Closing note: please decide to post to one list, not 2 or more :)
> >