[Selfhosting]: [librewrt-dev] LibreWRT and the Guidelines for Free System Distributions - Help with Compliance]

David Reyes Samblas Martinez david at tuxbrain.com
Fri Oct 1 18:53:34 EDT 2010


mmm Danny if you are listening,
Does Distribution refers only to software, isn't it? why then not
complile LibreWRT for a 386 machine and crosscompile to Nano be
posible? as far as i know FSF only is concerned to software, so I bet
when they say distribution is only the software itsetlf not the combo
software/hardware, so no need to make a nano cluster (in spite I will
love to see one working :P) just a 386 version of librewrt running on
midde/high power machine needed, isn't it?

2010/10/2 cristian paul peñaranda rojas <paul at kristianpaul.org>:
> ----- Forwarded message from Danny Clark <djbclark at freedomincluded.com> -----
>
> Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:00:29 -0400
> From: Danny Clark <djbclark at freedomincluded.com>
> To: Probably Brett or Donald <licensing at gnu.org>
> Cc: Brett C Smith <brett at fsf.org>,
>        Robert Call <Robert.Call at freedomincluded.org>,
>        LibreWRT Development List <dev at lists.librewrt.org>,
>        Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org>
> Subject: [librewrt-dev] LibreWRT and the Guidelines for Free System
>        Distributions - Help with Compliance
>
> Hi, as you may or may not be aware, a group of developers is
> attempting to create a GNU Guidelines for Free System Distributions -
> http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html -
> compliant variant of OpenWRT, called LibreWRT - http://librewrt.org .
>
> The project was started at the last FSF LibrePlanet conference -
> http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet2010/Hacking/LibreWrt - and has
> since then attracted a few more interested developers, and is nearing
> an alpha release.
>
> Besides my general interest in having a Libre operating system
> optimized for small devices, my company, Freedom Included, Inc., is
> planning on selling the Sharism Ben Nanonote - currently the most
> copylefted general purpose computing hardware I am aware of - with
> LibreWRT pre-installed, once LibreWRT is ready. Once that happens, and
> if we can get LibreWRT compliant with the guidelines, I would think
> the FSF might be interested in having this combination be its second
> piece of endorsed hardware.
>
> However there are two possible difficulties with compliance, and I'd
> like to get feedback from the maintainers of the document on how best
> to resolve them.
>
> (1) Self-hosting requirement
>
> """
> A free system distribution should be self-hosting. This means that you
> must be able to develop and build the system with tools that the
> system provides you. As a result, a free system distribution cannot
> include free software that can only be built by using nonfree
> software.
> """
>
> It is traditional on small and embedded systems with small amounts of
> RAM and other resources to cross-compile from other systems. While it
> would probably be possible to compile LibreWRT from LibreWRT, it would
> at the best take a very long time; at worst, it is possible GCC would
> fail or be so slow due to swap usage that it would take an amount of
> time approximating forever.
>
> So I see three options (but would welcome additional suggestions):
>
> (a) People feel this is really important, so LibreWRT people spend a
> whole lot of time and possibly money (eg clusters of small devices) on
> the self-hosting issue.
>
> (b) The text is changed to allow for use of one Guidelines for Free
> System Distributions approved GNU distribution to do builds of another
> Guidelines for Free System Distributions approved GNU distribution,
> either in general or just in the case of the second one being for a
> limited-resource device.
>
> (c) LibreWRT just includes say all of gNewSense or Trisquel in its
> source tree, and calls the combination LibreWRT. This would of course
> be a cheap and ugly semantic trick, but would seem to conform to the
> self-hosting requirement (however IANBCS).
>
>
> (2) Naming disambiguation requirement
>
> """
> However, we will not list a distribution whose name makes confusion
> with non-free distributions likely. For example, if Foobar Light is a
> free distribution and Foobar is a non-free distribution, we will not
> list Foobar Light. This is because we expect that the distinction
> between the two would be lost in the process of communicating this
> message.
> """
>
> So we currently call it "LibreWRT". There is of course also "OpenWRT",
> on which "LibreWRT" is based, and also at least one other GNU/Linux
> distro that uses the *WRT convention, "DD-WRT". Do you see the
> "LibreWRT" name as being a problem? If so, do you have any alternative
> naming suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
> --
>         \|/      Daniel JB Clark | Activist; Owner
> FREEDOM -+-> INCLUDED ~ http://freedomincluded.com
>         /|\      Free Software respecting hardware
> _______________________________________________
> librewrt-dev mailing list
> Dev at lists.librewrt.org
> http://lists.librewrt.org/listinfo.cgi/dev-librewrt.org
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
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-- 
David Reyes Samblas Martinez
http://www.tuxbrain.com
Open ultraportable & embedded solutions
Ben NanoNote, Arduino, Openmoko
Hey, watch out!!! There's a linux in your pocket!!!




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