Linux Libre in Debian

[Alexandre Oliva]

Hello, Simon,

Thanks for undertaking debian-libre, it's very valuable IMHO.

On Dec  1, 2025, Simon Josefsson <simon at josefsson.org> wrote:

> Maybe naming here is a problem though.  If this doesn't use your
> linux-libre sources, or even your deblob script, how do you feel about
> even calling that 'linux-libre'?

IMHO, as long as you follow the same approach and reach the same goal of
GNU FSDG-compliance, there's no reason to mind your calling it
Linux-libre, even if you need to adjust some details because you're
starting from a slightly different baseline.

There's one concern in my mind, however, about what corresponding
sources you'd publish.  If you just add cleaning-up scripts to Debian's
sources, you'll be already better off than those who publish upstream
sources plus scripts, because they still make binary blobs available
under obnoxious licenses as part of their source trees, whereas I
believe Debian cleans those up.  You might still be shipping plenty of
binary blob names and freedom-averse pieces of documentation, unless you
publish as corresponding sources the *result* of the cleaning up.


I'll second Jason's warning that the script-based approach to cleaning
up is to be phased out when we switch to a manually-cleaned repository.

We will still have a deblob-check, but the plan was to not have a
deblob-<kver> any more.

That said, maybe we can figure out a way to turn diffs between upstream
and libre releases into a script that cleans things up.  That may
involve running patch to do part of the job, but publishing such scripts
is probably not going to work, freedom-wise.

I have been thinking about how to address Trisquel's needs for a more
flexible way to clean up heavily patched upstream sources than taking
diffs between upstream and libre releases.  Maybe we'll be able to come
up with something, and that will be useful to you and to others that
currently rely on the cleaning-up scripts.

> anyone have ideas for names, that would be great ('linux-deblob'?).  I

linux.deblibred could be fun if you'd rather go for a name other than
linux-libre.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker            https://blog.lx.oliva.nom.br/
Free Software Activist     FSFLA co-founder     GNU Toolchain Engineer
Learn the truth about Richard Stallman at https://stallmansupport.org/