From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: rain1@openmailbox.org Subject: Re: MAME emulator is giving incentive to use non-free software Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 12:35:12 +0100 Message-ID: References: <20160328215516.GA27719@protected.rcdrun.com> <20160329002620.GB6484@jookia-eeepc.Home> <20160329044242.GA1239@protected.rcdrun.com> <20160329062711.GA17752@jookia-eeepc.Home> <20160329073040.GA20807@protected.rcdrun.com> <20160329082522.GA10814@jookia-eeepc.Home> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:50431) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1akrvk-00047F-5X for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 29 Mar 2016 07:35:33 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1akrvg-0007l5-TJ for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 29 Mar 2016 07:35:28 -0400 Received: from mail2.openmailbox.org ([62.4.1.33]:55522) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1akrvg-0007l1-LW for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 29 Mar 2016 07:35:24 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20160329082522.GA10814@jookia-eeepc.Home> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Jookia <166291@gmail.com> Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org On 2016-03-29 09:25, Jookia wrote: > On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 09:30:40AM +0200, Jean Louis wrote: >> I cannot understand the rationalization and justifications based on >> the >> single fact how WINE/MAME or other similar emulators are free software >> by themselves, and that is the only reason to include them, but let us >> avoid all the reality about that, that those platforms are being >> developed for the major purpose of running non-free software. It does >> not play alone. It is hypocrisy. > > I think this might be my last email since they don't seem to be forming > any kind > of discussion, so I'll leave this question: Should we ship Linux-libre > with > virtualization support? From what I know there's only a handful of > systems out > there that can run it without proprietary blobs in its BIOS updates. > What about > virtualization with PCI passthrough support, primarily used for video > games? > >> Jean Louis > > Jookia. I guess I should say a couple things since this all came about when I mentioned I packaged MAME for guix, since it recently switched to GPL2. My opinion on this is pretty simple: MAME is free software. I don't mind if it goes into guix packages tree or not - to be honest it doesn't seem that great an idea. The compile time is huge and the output is a 160MB binary. That would use up resources from build farms that could be better spent on core libraries like libc, gcrypt, openssl, ... MAME, Wine, Qemu and GNU/linux-libre all have the following in common: You can use them to run non free software. While they can all also be used to run free software I don't think this is important. Here's why: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).