Re: Packaging a free Firefox

[Nils Gillmann <ng0@n0.is>]

Ludovic Courtès transcribed 1.1K bytes:
> Hello Katherine,
> 
> Katherine Cox-Buday <cox.katherine.e@gmail.com> skribis:
> 
> > E.g. I've seen several people in this thread mention they had already,
> > or were trying to, package Firefox (myself included). Had there been an
> > official non-libre channel, this work might not have been duplicated.
> 
> There will never be an “official” non-libre channel in that Guix as a
> project will not provide such a channel.
> 
> Now, Firefox *is* free software, so there’s could be an official
> “firefox” package, but in essence, it would have to incorporate pretty
> much the same changes that IceCat provides.
> 
> I wonder why IceCat is based on an ESR, and what it would take to have
> it follow Firefox releases more closely.

I am not involved or speaking for Icecat, but ESR is moving slower than
Firefox "master" channel. This alone is good enough to base on it for
long-term support when you are a downstream vendor such as Torbrowser,
Icecat, or a simple company running a site-specific Firefox.

From Firefox; I remember reading Icecat ran into the same problems building
beyond 54.x than I have, but I might be wrong. In any case ESR as long as it
does provide the Off switch for rust should be kept around. After 54.x it's
up to those who solve the problems our build system (and presuable other systems
too) gets with the crates.

> IWBN if IceCat could be pretty

IWBN? What does that mean?

> much like Linux-libre, i.e., a set of scripts that semi-automatically
> adjusts the Firefox source (I’m not sure if that is the case currently.)
> 
> At any rate, people interested in this should probably team up with the
> IceCat people (person?) to see how we can together move in the right
> direction.
> 
> Ludo’.
>