[Dev] [RFC] Blacklist issue references

Michał Masłowski mtjm at mtjm.eu
Sat Mar 22 11:58:17 GMT 2014


Hello.  We have ~673 blacklist entries now, I believe we need more
cooperation with other free distros on package freedom issues and
interpretation of the FSDG.

For this reason I propose making a small and compatible blacklist format
change:

Instead of the current format:

  original-package:libre-replacement:description

Let's use this one:

  original-package:libre-replacement:ref:id:description

where ref is described by the following table:

    debian: &debian http://bugs.debian.org/
    fsf: &fsf http://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines#
    savannah: &sv https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?
    fedora: &fedora https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=
    parabola: &parabola https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/

Use the value after & as the ref column value, the URL pointed by it and
concatenated with the id field should point to an issue
reporting/describing the reason for the package being blacklisted.

I believe our scripts use the first two fields only, so they won't be
affected by the change.  Some descriptions already contain colons.

Example: instead of

  virtualbox:: contains BIOS which needs a nonfree compiler [...]

we will use

  virtualbox::parabola:375: contains BIOS which needs a nonfree compiler [...]

We should prefer fsf refs, since they are easily available for other
distros.  Hopefully some lines will move from parabola:X to fsf:Y with
the LibrePlanet wiki linking to the X issue on labs.parabola.nu.

To make reporting issues to gnu-linux-libre easier, we should explain
in the description if the package is blacklisted due to an upstream FSDG
issue, problem introduced by Arch (e.g. not including required license
text, adding optional dependency on a nonfree package), or just
branding, dependency or non-freedom-related issues which don't need
reporting to other distros.

The ref syntax is based on [0] which uses an imo more friendly markup
than our blacklist does.  We could separately migrate to another format
in future if we decide it being better and adapt the scripts.

I'll post a patch updating the blacklist to the proposed format and
adding needed documentation.

Any comments?

[0] http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/lh/gnewsense/debderiver/annotate/head:/examples/filters/parkes.yaml
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 818 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.parabola.nu/pipermail/dev/attachments/20140322/7434bb0e/attachment.sig>


More information about the Dev mailing list