Re: Vanilla Firefox recipe?

[Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org>]

[moving from help-guix to guix-devel]

On help-guix this exchange occured when discussing trying to install
Vanilla Firefox... two things struck me:

 - Firefox's source code is itself free, but it doesn't follow the FSDG
   (An assertion was made that Firefox was itself nonfree software,
   but this seems like an inaccurate characterization.  I agree it
   doesn't follow the FSDG, however.)
 - It is probably possible, with minimal changes, to resolve that.

So this page explains the problem:

  https://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines

"Problem: Recommends non-free addons and plugins; automatically downloads cisco's binary h.264 codecs"

I agree the latter is a problem.  The former is kind of maybe a problem,
but mostly because it isn't clear that it's happening to the user.

However, I wonder if, with a matter of just two patches, this could be
resolved:

 - Patch out the automatic download of Cisco's h.264 plugin.
 - Add a warning banner *above* the extensions page, or simply switch it
   to the same one that Icecat already uses.

Is that all that's necessary, then, to get "vanilla Firefox" in Guix?
It strikes me that with those two changes, the criteria would be met.

(Yes, I know that IceCat also provides LibreJS and some other plugins,
and that's nice to have, but Guix already ships several other browsers
that do not have those plugins, so this does not seem to be a strict
impediment and I don't think it should be either.  We could change the
default Firefox homepage to point at one that recommends installing some
of these plugins, if that would be helpful.)

 - Chris


Christopher Lemmer Webber writes:

> I'm not sure it's really accurate to categorize asking for a vanilla
> copy of firefox, which might not comply with the FSDG, as nonfree
> software.  The primary issue with Firefox that makes it qualify as
> "nonfree" is that the add-ons tool brings you to something that might
> guide a user towards nonfree software right?  Thus I think this isn't
> exactly correct framing, since firefox itself isn't nonfree?  There is a
> difference if I, as a user, install Firefox as free software, and I am
> aware of the issue with the default extensions kit, and end up
> installing no nonfree software on my computer, right?
>
> Am I missing something?  What makes Firefox itself nonfree (which I
> think is not quite the same thing as not compliant with the FSDG)?
>
>
> Adonay Felipe Nogueira via writes:
>
>> I came late to this issue, but I think this should have been posted on
>> development mailing list. It's not good if we use the general help list
>> to foster non-free software like Firefox or those which are third-party
>> package managers with no default repository explicitly commited to
>> following the GNU FSDG.
>>
>> Furthermore, to ease the sides of both the thread starter and the
>> community, I'm taking a simplification in that I'm considering the use
>> of such non-free software for purpose of developing or improving a free
>> replacement. That means I'm not discussing the merit of whether the
>> question should or shouldn't have been answered the way it was.
>>
>> One must be remind though, that the GNU FSDG isn't only about the
>> packages distributed (software, documentation, text fonts, etc), but
>> also about the community, and this is one of the things that keep Debian
>> out of the list of free system distributions.
>>
>> Em 12/05/2020 16:23, Efraim Flashner escreveu:
>>> On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 10:31:02PM +0200, Guillaume Le Vaillant wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> skribis:
>>>>
>>>>> Anyone have a package definition (or channel) for a recent vanilla
>>>>> firefox?
>>>>>
>>>>> I understand the decision to prefer distributing Icecat instead in Guix
>>>>> proper, but I need a more recent version of things... I suspect others
>>>>> sometimes do too.  I have a feeling at least someone in the community
>>>>> has written such a definition... would you mind sharing?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks!
>>>>>  - Chris
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> There is a channel at
>>>> https://forge.monarch-pass.net/warrah/warrah-nonfsdg with a package
>>>> definition for Firefox 74.0.1. I haven't tested it though.
>>>
>>> Other options include using the now official flatpak copy of firefox. If
>>> you do go that route make sure to use the '--user' flag for flatpak so
>>> it doesn't segfault while trying to write to /var/lib/flatpak.
>>>