On Mon, 3 Apr 2023 00:49:09 -0400 bill-auger <bill-auger@peers.community> wrote: > i think it is only the words that are confusing us, not the > ideas - by "from scratch", i was not suggesting anything like > self-bootstrapping (ala: GNU MESS) - we dont need to require > jumping down that rabitt-hole This is what is complicated here: if we want to propose changes we need to get words right not to add more confusion, and as we both can see it can be hard to get them right. Licenses also have similar issues.
But we could try with something like that instead: > the distro must provide all the software needed to recompile itself > entirely, and that must be possible to accomplish using at > least one of the already-endorsed systems. > if the distro is not capanble of (re)compiling itself (hardware > resource constraints, for example), complete instructions must be > given, desribing which distro can be used to build it. But beside the fact that this requirement might not be necessary, this version also has issues: - If we use "must provide everything to recompile itself", then where would it stop? We probably don't want the distributions to necessarily have to provide hardware or shell / infrastructure for people to build software. - If we ask too little there could be issues too as we could miss things. > i only meant like: you could start with zero working parts of > 'foo-OS', only it's recipes and instructions, plus _some_ > complete working libre distro, Maybe we could define it as something that is not already provided by libre distros. This would specifically permit Replicant and Uruk use cases. I like a lot the part about instructions as it is more flexible and still keeps the same freedom constraints. > i dont see my revision as making the self-hosting criteria more > difficult to satisfy - i intended that to relax the constraints, > as to allow specialized distros like replicant, which can not > build themselves on any known target hardware That would probably help, especially because the FSDG only mentions limited resources, and not the strange case of Android. > it is really only saying that it must be possible _somehow_, to > build the distro using only free software - surely they all can > so that _somehow_, or they would not exist Yes I get that. My concern is more to get it right before sending the proposal. Else it might either be outright refused or they'd ask us to propose a patch and to do this work of finding a very precise wording, or they'd have to make the work instead of us which isn't the goal here. Denis.
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