Re: [GNU-linux-libre] third-party package managers

[bill-auger]

On Sun, 9 Jul 2023 17:47:38 +0200 Denis wrote:
> Is it OK if we keep them for now and warn users until some design work
> is done by GNU? If some were removed, can we add them back?

that is an essential concern for this work-group - if some software is
generally considered to be problematic, the reasonable thing to do is to remove
it, pending an investigation

that is why we have been handling this in parabola as more of a whitelist
approach: evaluate all of them shallowly, implement the simplest solution to
all of them initially, _then_ work on liberating one or another individually
according to their importance - in that way, we get _something_ done to address
the issue in a time-boxed manor

the past has shown us that some distro are not willing to do that, which means
those controversial code-bases will probably never be addressed; because there
is no imperative for any distro to do so - to require such controversial
software to be excluded until proven fit, would give those distros some
imperative to help us do the work, or at least to share their findings and
opinions

the approach RMS is suggesting, to address them only one at a time (the
blacklisting approach), will result in most of them being ignored for years,
regardless that we already have concluded that they all share the same essential
freedom problem and all need some sort of treatment or removal