RFCs and FSDG

Hi,

There are 3 documents that were removed from the Debian and its
derivatives.

  From libtheora:

1) http://svn.xiph.org/trunk/theora/doc/draft-ietf-avt-rtp-theora-00.txt

  From libogg:

2) http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3533.txt
3) http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5334.txt

For that reason, they are also absent both in gNewSense and
Trisquel. I'm working on LibreWrt 2 currently and I wonder how much
non-free are those texts? Are they not good for FSDG distros too?

The number 2's copyright statement seems contradictory to me but it's
probably my bad English:

  This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
  others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
  or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
  and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
  kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph
  are included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
  document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
  the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
  Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of

ffmpeg LICENSE file

Hi,

There's the following paragraph in the ffmpeg's LICENSE file:

 "The nonfree external library libfaac can be hooked up in FFmpeg. You need
  to pass --enable-nonfree to configure to enable it. Employ this option
  with care as FFmpeg then becomes nonfree and unredistributable."

Applying the FSDG, does it fall under:

 "What would be unacceptable is for the documentation to give people
  instructions for installing a nonfree program on the system, or mention
  conveniences they might gain by doing so."

or under:

 "For a borderline case, a clear and serious exhortation not to use the
  nonfree program would move it to the acceptable side of the line."

?

Re: [gnu.org #787981] VENENUX

On 03/11/2013 04:53 PM, PICCORO McKAY Lenz via RT wrote:
> 
> Now everyting its back.. except forums..
>
*** (sorry: wrong Cc. Corrected)

Hello,

it appears that there's no obvious link to the source repositories. I'm
not talking of the binary, nor even the source packages, but to the
developer repositories.

Moreover, it appears that some packages (Chromium, Nvidia...) might
contain non-free code. Our webmaster-in-chief suggested the distro
should go through the verification process again, which is why I'm
CC-ing the gnu-linux-libre mailing-list.

Meanwhile, can you provide the correct links to the developer repositories?

Regards,

==
hk

Facilitating payments/contributions to developers

It would be nice if free distributions could support giving donations to
the authors of their packages. 

The FSF could help with the backend of this (handling the money, etc),
but code is needed for the frontend, which somehow tastefully and
usefully presents users with this option, perhaps as part of the
installation process.

Ubuntu is doing something like this, where users can choose areas they
want to see improved and give a corresponding contribution.

Any thoughts about how this could be done, or know about any other
places where it's already being done?

--

-- 
John Sullivan | Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: 61A0963B | http://status.fsf.org/johns | http://fsf.org/blogs/RSS

Do you use free software? Donate to join the FSF and support freedom at
<http://www.fsf.org/register_form?referrer=8096>.

Reducing firmware loading timeout

Dear freedom lovers,

I am trying to build a kernel image for Loongson 3A and suitable for
gNewSense (and potentially every GNU/linux-libre distribution intended
to run on Loongson 3A).

I used the kernel 3.5 modified by Lemote [1] as a base. Then, I ran
the deblob-3.5 script [2] locally. The machine I use for testing uses
the radeon video driver which loads a binary blob on vanilla
kernel. By default, the firmware loading timeout is 60 seconds and,
because the binary firmware has been removed after running the deblob
script, the deblobbed kernel waits 60 seconds for nothing at boot:
beside nothing is printed on the display during that time, this is a
serious time penalty.

In order to boot faster, it is possible to change the value of the
variable loading_timeout from the kernel file
drivers/base/firmware_class.c to something lower than 60, say 5:

    static int loading_timeout = 60;        /* In seconds */

becomes:

    static int loading_timeout = 5;        /* In seconds */

This change works as expected after a recompilation.

Christophe

[1] http://dev.lemote.com/cgit/linux-official.git/

Gnuplot

Is Gnuplot really Free Software?

From their FAQ (http://www.gnuplot.info/faq/faq.html#SECTION00037000000000000000):
 ...
 Gnuplot is freeware in the sense that
 you don't have to pay for it. However
 it is *not* freeware in the sense that
 you would be allowed to distribute a
 modified version of your gnuplot freely.
 ...

From their `Copyright' file:
 ...
 Permission to modify the software is granted,
 but not the right to distribute the complete
 modified source code.  Modifications are to
 be distributed as patches to the released version.
 ...

Is the above limitation on the Freedom 2 acceptable?

Best regards,
Cojocaru Alexandru

Venevux Link Problem

GNU/Linux-libre from source code for Loongson 2F

Dear freedom lovers,

In an attempt to build a simple GNU/Linux-libre distribution targetted
at Loongson 2F machines, I wrote a document that describes how to
build a basic GNU/Linux-libre operating system. The system is built by
cross-compilation in two passes (with sysroot):

1. Cross-compilation toolchain and tools are built.
2. The target system is built.

I based my work on the writing of Haiyong Sun at
http://zdbr.net.cn/download/Loongson64-2.0.htm (now a dead link).

I publish this document on my website
http://christophe.jarry.ouvaton.org/gnu-linux/gllfsc/gllfsc.en.xhtml
in the hope it will be useful for our community.

Christophe

boinc

In recent correspondence with boinc developers here:
http://lists.ssl.berkeley.edu/pipermail/boinc_dev/2012-July/018782.html
it appears that they are willing to take steps to make their software
free and remove it from the blacklist on LibrePlanet (and a fortiori
allow it to be packaged in free distributions).

I would like help with advising them (entering that conversation on
the boinc-dev mailing list is preferable), and eventually to approve
the blacklist removal.
Anyone qualified to do so, please do.

Cheers,
Ramana

Recent changes to non-FSDG list

I've been skimming through changes in the non-FSDG list [1] in recent 
months. First of all a big thanks to Grant H. for filling in the blanks 
and cleaning it up.

I have some comments to straighten out some details.

The Thunderbird entry got an additional problem: non-free search 
plugins. It references a Parabola bug report. I wonder what exactly is 
non-free about those search plugins. I can see that the suggested patch 
is useful for concerns other than freedom (e.g. privacy).

The entry for OpenOffice.org originally suggested to link to a list of 
free extensions and to remove the non-free components or to 
alternatively use LibreOffice. Now it only suggests the latter, although 
I chose the former for the current stable release of gNewSense (and for 
the upcoming beta) to avoid integration problems.

The "PN=" item for the entries was invented so that source package names 
could be scraped from the wiki and fed to a blacklister. It's not 
currently used that way for gNewSense, but it doesn't hurt to maintain 
it. I don't see an immediate use for listing the binary package names 
too, though.

I have still to execute my idea of changing the titles from package-like 
names (e.g. helix-player) to software/project names (e.g. Helix player). 
I take it there are no objections. If anyone else wants to take up that 
task, be my guest.

[1] http://libreplanet.org/wiki/NONFSDG

Working with FSF on Debian Free-ness assessment

In case anyone hadn't seen this.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/07/msg00016.html