Iceweasel-UXP and Icedove-UXP

Iceweasel-UXP and Icedove-UXP

[Guix User]

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IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[guixuser]

hi

I recently migrated from debian to guixsd. I was shocked to see there was neither iceweasel nor icedove available. This is frustrating as they are commonly used programs on gnu/linux systems.

After a through research, I understood that there are some freedom issues. The available patches at parabola seems complicated. Then I came across the following in the SearX search:

Iceweasel-UXP: https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:project:iceweasel-uxp
Icedove-UXP: https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:project:icedove-uxp

They both are FSDG compliant and has good security+privacy focus. Can someone please package these as soon as possible (I would have done it if I could). Will be very useful for other migrators to guix as well.

Look, I understand that you guix people are working hard. To be honest, you people have done a great job. The uniqueness of guix is intriguing. At the same time, you people have to think about new users as well and understand their perspective. I have read some mails in the mail lists. Asking the new users to package what they want and suggesting alternative applications; is like passively showing middle finger to them. They (including me) have not only have to adopt to new environment; also have to work with unfamiliar applications? Come on, that's way too much. So please, please consider at least including these two apps in guix.

thanks

New Guix User. IceWeasel-UXP

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi guixuser,

> I recently migrated from debian to guixsd. I was shocked to see there
> was neither iceweasel nor icedove available. This is frustrating as
> they are commonly used programs on gnu/linux systems.

We offer Icecat.

--
Ricardo

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[guixuser]

> We offer Icecat.

OMG! Please read the bottom portion of my previous email.

thanks.

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[Ricardo Wurmus]

guixuser <guixuser@protonmail.com> writes:

>> We offer Icecat.
>
> OMG! Please read the bottom portion of my previous email.

I did and offered an available alternative.

Please note that your writing style comes across as needlessly
aggressive and demanding.  You may find that people are more willing to
help you if you change that.

--
Ricardo

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[guixuser]

[use this thread]

Budget? Are you serious? Any distro has to focus on their basic things like email and browser for new user; at least if project wants to grow and accommodate new users.

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[guixuser]

> I did and offered an available alternative.

... ?

> Please note that your writing style comes across as needlessly
> aggressive and demanding. You may find that people are more willing to
> help you if you change that.

My intention was not to be aggressive. I sorry if it looked that way. Just a newbie asking for help.

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[Jelle Licht]

Hey guixuser,

guixuser <guixuser@protonmail.com> writes:

> [use this thread]
>
> Budget? Are you serious? Any distro has to focus on their basic things like email and browser for new user; at least if project wants to grow and accommodate new users.

For at least your browsing needs, I know of two options.

Guix currently has IceCat, which is as close to FireFox as you can get
while still being a FSDG-distro. I assume that if one is used to
IceWeasel, using IceCat should feel very familiar. The only iffy part is
working with extensions that are not yet available in the IceCat
upstream list of supported web extensions.

There is also an `ungoogled-chromium' package, but be aware that this
can take quite some time to build on your local machine if no binary
substitutes are available.

Getting used to the guix way of doing things can take some time and
effort, but it is IMHO definitely worth the investment. Guix empowers
users to exert control over their computing in a way that few other
software does.

If you run into any unclear steps in the documentation or are missing
packages, there are usually people available on the mailing list or on
#guix on the Freenode IRC network to help you figure out how to get
something working.

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

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guixuser 写道：
> [use this thread]
>
> Budget? Are you serious?

Yes, of course.

Kind regards,

T G-R

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Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[guixuser]

> Yes, of course.

Okay. If came of as aggressive, I apologize. All I am looking for is help. I do not have any kind of experience with packaging. So if you could do it, I appreciate. Again, sorry If I have conducted myself wrongly before.

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[Jesse Gibbons]

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019 23:50:20 +0200
Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> wrote:

> guixuser <guixuser@protonmail.com> writes:
> 
> >> We offer Icecat.  
> >
> > OMG! Please read the bottom portion of my previous email.  
> 
> I did and offered an available alternative.
> 
> Please note that your writing style comes across as needlessly
> aggressive and demanding.  You may find that people are more willing
> to help you if you change that.
> 
> --
> Ricardo
> 
> 

To be fair,
- iceweasel-uxp has a different engine than icecat.
- There is no good email client like thunderbird. I'm stuck with
  claws-mail, and I reallly don't like it. icedove-uxp would be a good
  addition.
- icedove-uxp and iceweasel-uxp are likely to have similar dependencies
  given they are a part of the hyperbola project. It will probably be
  simple to write a package for iceweasel-uxp and iceape-uxp after
  icedove-uxp is written.

I think I can port icedove-uxp, and guixuser can use my code as a
template for iceweasel. It will help guixuser get comfortable with
porting and fixing packages, which would be important if guixuser is to
remain a guix user.

Guixuser, would you mind if I CC you when I submit the patch?

-Jesse

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[guixuser]

> To be fair,
>
> -   iceweasel-uxp has a different engine than icecat.
> -   There is no good email client like thunderbird. I'm stuck with
>     claws-mail, and I reallly don't like it. icedove-uxp would be a good
>     addition.

Exactly.

> -   icedove-uxp and iceweasel-uxp are likely to have similar dependencies
>     given they are a part of the hyperbola project. It will probably be
>     simple to write a package for iceweasel-uxp and iceape-uxp after
>     icedove-uxp is written.

True.

>     I think I can port icedove-uxp, and guixuser can use my code as a
>     template for iceweasel.

By port, do you mean packaging into guix?

Sure I can try that.

thanks.

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[Raghav Gururajan]

> I think I can port icedove-uxp, and guixuser can use my code as a
> template for iceweasel. It will help guixuser get comfortable with
> porting and fixing packages, which would be important if guixuser is
> to
> remain a guix user.

Hello Jesse!

It is great to hear that you are willing to work on this. I was just
planning yesterday to attempt porting those packages to guix. As you
said, it would be very helpful if you could port icedove-uxp and share
the patch. If guixuser not willing to work on this, I can try porting
iceweasel-uxp using your template. ☺

Thank you!

Regards,
RG.

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[Mark H Weaver]

Hello,

guixuser <guixuser@protonmail.com> writes:
> Asking the new users to package what they want and suggesting
> alternative applications; is like passively showing middle finger to
> them.

This idea seems to pop up from time to time, and I think it deserves a
closer look.

First of all, we're not asking you to do anything.  Rather, you are
asking us to do something.  You are asking us to do the development work
to add the packages you need.

For what it's worth, I've spent hundreds of hours over the last few
years maintaining the GNU IceCat package in Guix, and at least 40 hours
trying to get IceDove working.  Sorry, but I got stuck and ran out of
energy.  I'm under no moral obligation to finish that work.  I'm not
standing in the way of someone else doing it, and I never promised
anyone that I'd finish it.  Also, incidentally, I've never made a penny
from working on Guix.

You seem to be suggesting that my failure to finish this work is
tantamount to showing you my middle finger (which is a strong insult in
my culture, for the benefit of those who might not know).  More to the
point, you seem to be implying that I have a moral obligation to add the
missing packages that you desire.

Please keep in mind that we are not a business who sold you a product.
We are a widely dispersed group of volunteers from around the world who
built this system to meet our own needs, and we decided to offer it as a
gift to anyone else who wants it.  Moreover, we have taken pains to
ensure that you have the freedom to change this gift as you wish, to
better meet your own needs.

You apparently find this gift intriguing in some ways, but also
disappointing in other ways.  I'm sincerely sorry if this gift is not
satisfactory to you, but please understand that we are under no
obligation to do anything more for you.  That's not an insult, it's
simply me saying that you have no right to demand more of me.  If you
don't like the gift, don't use it.  No one is pushing it on you.

If you invited me to your home for dinner, and I didn't like the food,
should I feel entitled to demand that you go back into the kitchen and
cook my chosen dish?  If you told me "you're free to use the kitchen to
cook it yourself", should I take that as an insult?

      Mark

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[N]

guixuser transcribed 680 bytes:
> 
> > To be fair,
> >
> > -   iceweasel-uxp has a different engine than icecat.
> > -   There is no good email client like thunderbird. I'm stuck with
> >     claws-mail, and I reallly don't like it. icedove-uxp would be a good
> >     addition.
> 
> Exactly.
> 
> > -   icedove-uxp and iceweasel-uxp are likely to have similar dependencies
> >     given they are a part of the hyperbola project. It will probably be
> >     simple to write a package for iceweasel-uxp and iceape-uxp after
> >     icedove-uxp is written.
> 
> True.
> 
> >     I think I can port icedove-uxp, and guixuser can use my code as a
> >     template for iceweasel.
> 
> By port, do you mean packaging into guix?
> 
> Sure I can try that.
> 
> thanks.

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. look at
  freebsd who got shouted at in github for even daring to have a public
  work-in-progress package and then asking).

- 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.

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.

- 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.


Closing note: please decide to post to one list, not 2 or more :)

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[Jesse Gibbons]

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.
> 
> - 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/
> 
> 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.

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 :)
> 

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[N]

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 :)
> > 

Re: IceWeasel-UXP and IceDove-UXP

[Jesse Gibbons]

On Sat, 20 Jul 2019 13:01:16 -0400
Raghav Gururajan <rvgn@disroot.org> wrote:

> > I think I can port icedove-uxp, and guixuser can use my code as a
> > template for iceweasel. It will help guixuser get comfortable with
> > porting and fixing packages, which would be important if guixuser is
> > to
> > remain a guix user.  
> 
> Hello Jesse!
> 
> It is great to hear that you are willing to work on this. I was just
> planning yesterday to attempt porting those packages to guix. As you
> said, it would be very helpful if you could port icedove-uxp and share
> the patch. If guixuser not willing to work on this, I can try porting
> iceweasel-uxp using your template. ☺
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> Regards,
> RG.

When I start a guix environment and try to build icedove-uxp, it
complains that it cannot find basilisk. The trademark for basilisk is
strictly and mercilessly protected (see the license in the UXP project
[0], the licensing page[1] and the redistribution license [2]), and
I am not willing to define basilisk because I think it is nonfree
due to the trademark policy and I do not want any trouble with
moonchild/PaleMoon. I have placed my work on icedove-uxp on hold for
now and consider it very low priority.

guixuser or RG, if you want to figure out how to build icedove-uxp
without basilisk, be my guest. You can find what I did at my
github repository for broken guix package definitions:
https://github.com/jgibbons94/Broken-Guix-Packages

The UXP package in broken-packages/uxp.scm is basically complete; to
use it in a project (such as icedove-uxp), link $source/mozilla to
wherever guix installs uxp.

The icedove-uxp package in broken-packages/icedove-uxp.scm is broken
and minimalistic but is a good starting template.

Have fun!

-Jesse

[0]:https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/UXP/blob/master/LICENSE
[1]: http://www.palemoon.org/licensing.shtml
[2]: http://www.palemoon.org/redist.shtml