Re: [Gnewsense-dev] Question about gNewSense 5 (Debian Stretch)

[Paul Boddie]

On Saturday 22. April 2017 20.33.37 Sam Geeraerts wrote:
> Op Fri, 21 Apr 2017 18:30:19 +0200 schreef Paul Boddie <address@hidden>:
> > I can probably dig up something either from the MoinMoin site or from
> > scripts I've written to delete users who register to try and spam but
> > never manage to perform edits.
> 
> Excellent.

I'll put a shell script together that should support pruning users from the 
wiki. I did this for another wiki, but I don't think I have access to the 
script any more.

[...]

> > Is no-one getting any financial support for working on gNewSense,
> > then? Is it yet another case of "glory" supposedly being sufficient
> > reward for everybody's time and the impact on their health and
> > quality of life?
> 
> I think I'm one of many who would like to get paid to work on free
> software, but struggle to find a working business model. I'm sure some
> people would like to make a donation for gNewSense, but that's unlikely
> to add up to a steady income. So quitting the day job is not an option
> and then donation wouldn't buy time. That's why I don't accept
> donations at all.

I just wondered about this because for some organisations it is important to 
have libre GNU/Linux distributions available, and yet the number of such 
distributions seems to have fluctuated over the years, and their continued 
availability has been uncertain. It probably isn't in anyone's best interests 
for things to continue like this. While enthusiastic volunteers can always be 
persuaded to spend their own time on it (for the "glory"), it just frustrates 
and confuses people if those volunteers burn out, give up, and so on. And I 
doubt that the FSF having to constantly evaluate new distributions is a great 
use of their (volunteers') time.

> > For me, I'd just appreciate a simple overview of how Debian's output
> > is transformed into gNewSense. It seems to me that everyone who knows
> > how a distribution is made is so embedded in the process that they
> > never really care about communicating how it is done. As far as I
> > remember, the wiki had some descriptions, but they were out-of-date
> > and described the previous Ubuntu- based approach.
> 
> The general idea is this:
> 
> 1) Copy Debian's package repository.
> 2) Identify the packages that don't align with the Free Software
> Distribution Guidelines or that contain Debian specific branding.
> 3) For each of those packages:
> 3a) Unpack the source
> 3b) Modify the code
> 3c) Update version info, changelog and other package metadata
> 3d) Repackage source and build binaries
> 4) Replace those packages in the package repository
> 5) Build installer images
> 
> Builder is a tool that knows about repo locations, branding info,
> packages to be modified, build instructions etc.

I saw once again that Devuan has been trying to make derivative distribution 
building easier:

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=551
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=549

I don't know how much their tools overlap with the activities involved here, 
though.

Paul