throgh wrote:koszko wrote:Package manager without packages would be useless... or is there a flatpack repo, that only hosts libre sw and can be used instead of Flathub?
Good idea, of course it would be useless without a concrete source. I think it would be helpful having a concurrent libre repository instead of addressing also proprietary applications. It should always be an individual decision of the user, Thererfore this discussion and thanks for your points, zapper and koszko. :-)
Seems like the same would be needed for many more PMs (package managers). I've seen some nonfree packages being served through quicklisp (PM of common lisp). Looks like it might also happen with Maven (PM for JVM-based languages) packages, since requirements for uploading to it's repos don't say, that the software has to be under a free license.
These are just examples. In the end, most of third party PMs out there (first-party one being pacman with Hyprebola repo in this case) allow nonfree stuff in their default repos (although there are exceptions, like ELPA). And even if all the packages are free, they might still be privacy unfriendly (difficult thing to check automatically), which is against Hyperbola's policies... (although maybe acceptable in other libre distros)
The question appears: does it make sense to create a libre repo for each of those PMs or would it be better to just package everything libre they provide in one place for one PM (pacman?)?
throgh wrote:Perhaps this could be a project being supported from all libre distributions and with the help of the community.
You're right, it would be beneficial to have the software available in all libre distros, so repackaging everything for pacman seems like a bad idea (+ I recall Hyperbola's roadmap mentions removing unneeded stuff from the repo). A cross-distro PM is needed.
There's one interesting rant about PMs, that I believe hilights some problems well. Not that I agree with everything there