[blag-whereto] BLAG future development and endorsement

[Brett Smith]

Hi folks,

You all probably remember the GNU Bucks program that the FSF helped
launch last year (http://www.gnu.org/help/gnu-bucks.html), and around
that time I checked in on how BLAG development was going.  I know you
all have been working to set up the right infrastructure for your
project, and that's understandably is task #1 for you.

I recently got a report through the GNU Bucks program that the version
of Firefox in BLAG sometimes recommends proprietary plug-ins (usually
Adobe Flash).  I went to point this person to the project Trac site, and
while I was there I noticed some older tickets along the same lines,
like #38.  It seems like there are tickets in the older Bugzilla that
are still relevant, too.

Unfortunately, it seems like the infrastructure issues are no closer to
being resolved now than they were a few months ago.  I don't mean this
as a criticism, and I hope you won't take it that way: I understand that
you all are volunteers with a lot of different priorities, and this is
the sort of task that can take a while for people who aren't familiar
with it.  I've never set up a package autobuilder myself; it would
probably take me a while too.

But the reason I bring it up is that it makes a sticking point for the
FSF's continued endorsement of BLAG.  As you're aware, endorsed
distributions are expected to have a commitment to removing free
software when it's discovered in their systems.  And I still believe
that you're all committed to that principle.  But without the practical
ability to follow through on the commitment, people who download BLAG
expecting only to get free software may be unpleasantly surprised to
find well-known problematic software in the distribution.  And that sort
of surprise is exactly the feeling our endorsement is meant to prevent.

Because of that, if we don't see concrete progress on BLAG development
very soon, we may need to temporarily withdraw our endorsement of BLAG.
To be clear, that *only* applies to the actual endorsement on
<http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html>.  We'd still provide all
the existing infrastructure for the project, like the Trac install.  We
genuinely hope that you'd be able to use that to bootstrap active
development on the distribution -- and once that happens, we'd be happy
to point people to it again.  Like I said before, we just want to make
sure we avoid confusing people who are looking to use a distribution
that's known to be as free as possible.

I hope you understand where we're coming from this -- if you have any
questions about it, please don't hesitate to ask me.  And no matter what
happens in the short term, hopefully soon enough BLAG will be on our
list of endorsed distributions, to stay for a good while longer.

Best regards,

-- 
Brett Smith
Licensing Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation

Support the FSF by becoming an Associate Member: http://fsf.org/jf