Is GoboLinux considered a free distro? By “free” I mean as defined by gnu.org.
I can see that software freedom is promoted in GoboLinux. But I couldn’t find clear policy on how nonfree software is treated and whether GoboLinux include/allow for nonfree software or not.
Maybe it’s just me who hasn’t searched enough. But if no such page with clear policy definitions exist, it would be nice have one.
Have a nice day,
Naheel
Hi @naheel afaik GoboLinux includes some non-free software in it’s repositories, but you are free to verify it for yourself (I could be wrong). Every recipe includes licensing information in its Description file.
The general approach of GoboLinux seems to be: provide what is useful.
Ok. I guess I’m looking at Gobo from a Parabola perspective. You know how it goes, everyone imagines their own blend of distros.
Anyway, running the following indeed shows a mix of all kinds of licenses. I guess it wouldn’t be hard to write a script that restricts any nonfree license.
ls ./*/*/Resources/Description | xargs sed -rn 's/\[License\] *(.+)/\1/p' | sort | uniq -i
But how about the kernel, is there any interest in a libre, blob-free, version of Linux in Gobo?
Please excuse my paranoia, I really liked Gobo but I have a few concerns. Just some comments maybe to be addressed later.
License description does not seem to be very consistent. There are also many recipes with no license details. Running the following prints 971.
ls ./*/*/Resources/Description | while read -r f; do [ -z "$(sed -rn 's/\[License\] *(.+)/\1/p' "$f")" ] && echo "$f"; done | wc -l
Another issue is that I see many plaintext http URLs. Running the following shows 8595 http URLs.
grep -Er "url=['\"]?http://" | wc -l
Perhaps these should be changed in the future.
Hi @naheel thank you for looking into it.
Yup that is what I expected but thank you. I agree it would not be hard to write such a script. However first, GoboLinux would need clear descriptors for the various licenses. Right now it is more of a ‘wild west’. And rightfully so. We do not have any maintainers right now, therefore there most (if not all) recipes have been created from a personal need (in order to get stuff to work) by individuals.
License description does not seem to be very consistent. There are also many recipes with no license details. Running the following prints 971.
ls ./*/*/Resources/Description | while read -r f; do [ -z "$(sed -rn 's/\[License\] *(.+)/\1/p' "$f")" ] && echo "$f"; done | wc -l
Those should definitely be fixed. It might be that many are even missing a Description file. Also some recipes might contain outdated license information, in case it has changed over the releases.
Another issue is that I see many plaintext http URLs. Running the following shows 8595 http URLs.
grep -Er "url=['\"]?http://" | wc -lPerhaps these should be changed in the future.
Yes personally I am aware of that. I think somebody pointed it out before or maybe it is also pointed out on GoboLinux repository information - Repology. As you see most of our packages are out of date 
I agree all this stuff should be improved and that we should have clearly defined license names, and an official possibility not to install non-free software.
However, frankly all developement around GoboLinux is what its users make it. So far apparently there was no such interest, or more likely, it has not been the priority.
I myself have a to do list of 100+ issues in GoboLinux, and I am happy when it works on my system the way I want it
Same for the non-free kernel, such a recipe would certainly be well-comed but even our current kernel recipe is severely outdated, the kernel update script is buggy, our last gobo release is several years old, and we do not have any maintainers.
So one possibilty is to help GoboLinux yourself, or wait for it to be implemented. However there are currently more urgent issues that should be prioritized I would dare to say.
Thank you for the detailed response. It’s sad to see such great project but with little interest from people.
I’d defiantly be interested in helping and getting things done myself. But unfortunately, I also have more urgent issues that I have to prioritize in real life beyond my obsessions. A “just works” solution is necessary for daily tasks.
Gobo is living in a little virtual machine in my laptop for now. Who knows, maybe I manage to get time to play around more and hopefully contribute to it.
It would be pretty fair to say that at no point in its history has GoboLinux been (or aimed to be) a “just works” solution, so it’s probably not what you’re looking for in that respect. It is all geared towards providing the open environment the user can meddle with.