Re: Question about one package

[Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net>]

Hi there,

> First of all, I apologize for using a Gmail email, it happens that I do not
> know any mail server that is free, but, if you could give me any
> recommendation in this regard, I would greatly appreciate it.

There’s nothing wrong with using an email server that is operated by
somebody else, so there’s absolutely no need to apologize.

Furthermore, it’s up to *you* what software you use.  Some people
construe the use of proprietary software or centralized services as a
moral failing of some sort — it certainly is not.  Proprietary software
denies those who use it control.  That is why it is injust.

We only ask that proprietary software should not be endorsed or
discussed on the Guix project communication channels.  But nobody should
judge others for the software they choose to use (or accept to be used
by).

> The software that is on this page:
> https://www.simulide.com/p/home.html
> From my perspective, it is free software, since it is published under the
> GPL, however it is not within the Guix repository, could you add it so that
> it can be available? I'm not so sure how to create the package, so I come
> to you.

If you are interested in learning how to package this, we could do this
together.  This is a Qt5 application – we have a couple of those in the
repository.  The README.md file lists a few dependencies, most of which
look familiar to me.  The only difficult part might be to integrate the
AVR GCC toolchain, but we can cross that bridge when we get there.

If you like to give it a try, I suggest you read and follow along in the
packaging tutorial in the Cookbook:

   https://guix.gnu.org/cookbook/en/html_node/Packaging.html

Once you have a rough understanding of how things are designed to work
we can work on this package together here on help-guix@gnu.org.  Sounds
good?

> And finally, I am a university student, so I am forced to use proprietary
> services under the web such as Google Meet, Gmail, etc. Could it be
> feasible to use guix with these services without compromising freedom, or
> would it be better to continue using Windows for these areas?

At least for Gmail there’s a way to use it without proprietary software
(= their JavaScript that your browser mindlessly executes).  You can use
Gmail as an IMAP/POP + SMTP server and connect to it with free software.

I no longer use Gmail, but the solution I use also works for Gmail:
offlineimap (for synchronizing a local copy of my email with the IMAP
server), msmtpd (for sending emails through the remote SMTP server), mu
(for local indexing and search), and mu4e (for a mail client in Emacs).

-- 
Ricardo