HyperForum — Free Culture

Concerned about init freedom in Guix, only left Dragora and Hyperbola?

2026-04-13T04:08:49Z

Shepherd is forced on the user which would be one thing, this is understandable due to the reproducibility and Bootstrappable goal, using an easy-to-audit language like Scheme is fitting for that purpose. However, correct me if I'm wrong, the USB ISO installer of the Guix System loads udev without ever giving you the option not to do that at any point?
One can be pragmatic about it such as those who download non-FSF approved distributions and remove firmware blobs following installation, but this is not the approach that is taken here, as such I think using the Guix USB/DVD installer to set up your machine is wrong from the init freedom perspective, still I appreciate the Guix package manager itself and love the project's goals of making a fully bootstrappable system.

I believe Dragora and Hyperbola are the only self-hosting and online-capable (meeting these two criteria is crucial for development) distributions that are 100% free of udev and blobs by default? Another question I had is that Dragora seems to be considered the only independently compiled FSF-approved distribution for PCs, but I thought that Hyperbola also is.

Game changer

2026-03-23T10:12:26Z

Today I read about a thing that made me feel fear.
As you probably know, there is some pressure (even laws in place) for age verification, in some cases down to the OS level.
But today, I learned that a piece of software present in almost all Linux systems, Systemd, already implemented the collection of users age, because some laws demand to have it in the near future. And what makes me fear is basically that Systemd is not optional for any of the big Linux distributions. I would say this is quiet relevant.

Even after some concerns from the community (https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954) this is going forward. And it makes me think that, even in the case of opensource (like systemd) freedom/privacy could be underprotected. I terms of governance would NOT say the Systemd/Linux OS is like Windows or Mac, a gap is still there. but the opinion of the community is not that strong anymore.

what makes free software free

2025-01-06T15:50:34Z

The last post of 2024 made me think about how difficult is to talk about ethics in the world of software.
Fortunately, we already understand that available source code is necessary but not sufficient. For that, one should be able to play/learn/change/publish.... the code. But also the code should be readable. For example, at the beginning javascript was intended as naturally free. It has to reach our browsers in plain text format. Nowadays, javascript reach our browsers in waves , out of control, massively, thousands of characters written in a single line. I do not know any legal restriction on taking/coping/modifying that shots of code, but even experienced programmers will need hours to understand a single web page (I am talking about the text-format javascript of e.g. a social-net webpage).
Then, the example of systemd, the software is officially free, is part of some Libre distributions. But the feeling is that it is not fully free: i) it restricts the OS (only Linux) ii) restrict the environment (no musl lib) iii) it is huge, hardly modular, even experience programmers would need hours to make a single proper modification.
So what is the technical definition of a software made with ethics in mind. I would say it is quiet difficult. I have to remember why the GNU project selected UNIX as the model of choice: UNIX was comprehensive even by a small group of developers. There was not huge pieces of software, just UNIX philosophy. Even if UNIX would not be the best technical choice, it was the most accessible. I can imagine replacing cp, mv, ls or cd one by one on a commercial UNIX and slowly building GNU testing on all single step should be comprehensive.
So, user oriented libre software should have a proper license, but also should be simple, modular and readable - comprehensive. Unfortunately, this is not easy to write down into a license.

The red-line of what is source or binary distribution

2024-09-17T09:53:33Z

From the last release of Linux libre ( https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info … 00007.html ) I read:

The contributor agreed, and immediately proceeded to address the legal problem [at Linux], posting patches to move the blob out. Unfortunately, the top maintainer of Linux doesn't seem to have seen a problem there, and proceeded to the final release without the fix.

Years ago Linux was opening a door (binaries in the kernel) that now looks very difficult to control. I feel the people of Linux libre will give up one day, this job has to be frustrating.

Digital Sustainability

2024-07-20T14:00:50Z

I just read the news about new law of Switzerland about sustainable software in public administration, which initially will focus on a plan between 2024-2027. The goal to pursuit is Digital Sustainability, and the implementation is focus on Open Source Software and Open Government Data.

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/ … witzerland

Independently of the implementation which could be matter of discussion, one could think that this somehow represents a technical emancipation at the country level (sorry for the extrapolation). I remember other movements in the past (like Munich or Extremadura) where the motivation was economical or educational. If I understand correctly, the movement now is motivated (like Swiss Government moving to Mastodon) for preventing loosing technical freedom. Or the other way around, try to guarantee future technical freedom (emancipation?). Maybe I am stressing too much the language, but I have to say that I see everyday organizations trapped by their technical suppliers, loosing the capacity of taking own decisions.

The sad story about Purism and the Librem?

2019-11-03T17:48:40Z

Hello Community,

do you know Purism? The company being focussed on privacy-respecting devices? Especially their freedom-respecting mobile phone Librem 5 is in the news when looking onto libre soft- and hardware. But when looking around there were many bad news within the last month regarding the device and internals of the company not being honest to the community, the employees and their customers.

You all can read it yourself:

The Sad Saga of Purism and the Librem 5 : Part 1
The Sad Saga of Purism and the Librem 5 : Part 2
The Sad Saga of Purism and the Librem 5 : Part 3

Last but not least there is also an interview with the former CTO of Purism Zlatan Todoric available on Phoronix - besides my personal concerns about Phoronix and their handlings regarding free, libre soft- and hardware.