[gNewSense-users] Freedom verification (checking packages)

[Andrew Wigglesworth]

Hi everyone,

We've had a lot of interesting conversation about the freedom of gNewSense. 
General stuff around the need for freedom and that not everything may be free 
in gNewSense.

The possibility of non-free packages in gNewSense is bug number 1 in the bug 
tracker:

http://bugs.gnewsense.org/Bugs/00001

We now need people to start "stepping up to the plate".  ie. start organising 
and doing this in a public way.

The repositories are already split up alphabetically.  My proposal is that 
people take personal responsibility for parts of the repository and start 
working on them.

ie.  someone will take a letter of the alphabet and take responsibility for 
checking all those packages.

The creation of a new "freedom verification" section on the website where 
people can volunteer to take up a responsibility and then record their 
progress in the wiki.

This needs to be a public process. ie.  "J.Bloggs is responsible for verifying 
all packages under the letter T and this is the page on the wiki where you 
can see her progress".

If people are already doing his work, then I apologise, but if this is not 
organised in an public/open way then we will continue in going round in 
circles on this issue

Soooo, after all that, here's my personal "stepping up to the plate".  

If people think this proposal is a good idea; I will pledge to work my way 
through the letter "a" packages and verify their freedom.

Now, that's quite a few packages, and I'm not 100% sure how to go about this 
verification. Give me a break, I'm a musician not a computer programmer!

A good starting point, I think, would be for me to look at each of the tar.gz 
original sources that are in the gNewSense repositories and check the licence 
details.  Would a search in the Debian bug tracker be a good idea as well?


-- 
Andrew


        
        
                
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