Free Software Directory:Free software evaluation

Members

Team Captain: David Hedlund

Participants:

• Bill-auger
• Adfeno

Software evaluation

See also: Project Team Free software evaluation

4 listed:

	License
Brave Browser
Chromium
Iridium Browser
Signal

Discussed

Chromium-based browsers and software

See also [1].

• Brave Browser
• Chromium itself. See Talk:Chromium page for instructions on how to contribute to ongoing evaluation.
• Iridium Browser (based on the Chromium code base)
• Ungoogled-Chromium

Electron[2]

• The Electron web framework itself
• Atom
• Etcher
• Jami
• Riot.im
• Visual Studio Code - Note: Visual Studio Code binaries are not free software, but the source is licensed under the Expat license.
  • VSCodium - Note: Visual Studio Code without tracking and proprietary builds.
• Wire

Qt WebEngine[1][2]

• The Qt WebEngine library itself
• Falkon
• KDevelop
• Konqueror
• Nextcloud (specifically nextcloud-client)
• Qtcreator
• Quassel
• QupZilla
• QuteBrowser
• SuperCollider
• Many others ....

1. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/directory-discuss/2017-12/msg00008.html
2. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2017-01/msg00001.html

Telegram (desktop client)

• NonFreeNet, UpstreamNonFree - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.telegram.messenger/
• Has delayed availability of source files compared to the binary release. See the numbered items below for more information.
  • Investigate if, after a binary release, the software has a license notice available somewhere and a place telling how to contact the copyright holders for the complete corresponding source.
• Free/libre software philosophy related issue: lacks federation with XMPP. See the whole parent thread of the references from the enumerated list below, and also the page on XMPP in LibrePlanet wiki.

1. https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/private/android/2017-December/001049.html (requires subscription)
2. https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/private/android/2017-December/001075.html (requires subscription)

Investigate if these can be built and run entirely in free/libre system distributions

• Rufus: claims to build and run only on Windows.

Trademark

Free_Software_Directory:Antifeatures#Trademark

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/list/
• Scratch: http://download.scratch.mit.edu/scratch-1.4.0.6.src.tar.gz: /TRADEMARK_POLICY

EME

Tor Browser - https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/16285

Nonfree JS

Every JavaScript file in every software for each new version release should be evaluated with command line tool that has the same capabilities as LibreJS. Unfortunate there's no such tool yet.

Nonfree servers

Currently the integration server is not configurable in this client.

• Riot.im

IRC clients

These web-based IRC clients or webchats cannot be used with LibreJS:

The Lounge:	feature request	test LibreJS
Kiwi IRC:	feature request	test LibreJS: https://webchat.freenode.net/#fsf, https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/#irc://chat.freenode.net/#fsf
qwebirc:	feature request	test LibreJS

We're using irc:// in Template:Print_entry (used on the entry pages like IceCat) and Template:IRC_text (used on the Main Page).

Related: IceCat, Free web-based IRC client replacement for Mibbit needed.

Mibbit (nonfree) is inbuilt in Firefox, but not even Mibbit doesn't connect to Freenode channels any more (test): "Connections via mibbit are no longer supported on freenode."

Parabola blacklisted software

Blacklisted Parabola software that is approved in the Directory Note: these programs are considered to be non-free as published by their respective upstreams; but many of them have known liberation procedures and are available in Parabola and other FSDG distros in modified form.

• Abiword
• Abs
• Abuse
• Acpi_call
• Apache_Ant
• Ark
• Atom
• Atool
• Bbswitch
• Bfgminer
• Blackbox
• Blender
• Bogofilter
• Boinc
• Bugzilla
• Bumblebee
• Calibre
• Capi4hylafax
• Cdrtools
• Cgminer
• Clementine
• Clojure
• Clonezilla
• Closure_Compiler
• Cowsay
• Drbl
• Ecasound
• Engrampa
• Epiphany
• Gfxboot
• Gnormalize
• Grub
• Hydrogen
• Jmol
• Kopete
• Kile
• Kodi
• Konqueror
• Krusader
• Libxfce4ui
• Mapnik
• Maven
• Mc
• Mesa
• Midori
• Minitube
• Mp32ogg
• Netpbm
• Pacman
• Povray
• Psutils
• Pyrit
• Qtcreator
• Qupzilla
• Ruby
• Shntool
• Shutter
• Systemd
• Vim
• Wings3d
• Xarchiver
• Xscreensaver
• Parley
• Bladerf

About

This project page is for heightened scrutiny, packages that need a second pass essentially.

Software should be considered non-free until proven otherwise - the burdon of proof should be on the developers to prove their code is 100% freely distributable.

Script

[See https://git.parabola.nu/blacklist.git/tree/?h=development for more scripts]

#!/bin/bash

readonly WIKI_BASE_URL=https://directory.fsf.org/wiki
readonly BLACKLIST_URL=https://git.parabola.nu/blacklist.git/plain
readonly BLACKLIST_FILE=blacklist.txt


wget $BLACKLIST_URL/$BLACKLIST_FILE
[ ! -f ./$BLACKLIST_FILE ] && echo "download failed" && exit 1


readonly PACKAGES=$(grep '^\s*[^:#]*:.*' ./$BLACKLIST_FILE                           | \
                    sed 's/^\s*\([^:#]*\):.*/\1/ ; s/^./\U&/g ; s/-./\U&/g ; s/-/_/g')

for package in $PACKAGES
do status=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" $WIKI_BASE_URL/$package)
   if   [ "$status" == '200' ]
   then echo "$package entry exists"
   elif [ "$status" == '404' -o "$status" == '301' ]
   then echo "$package entry not found"
   else echo "$package unknown response"
   fi
done

License verification

All pages in license pages should have the correct version of the GPL. "The ones I looked at were pretty old, so I'm guessing they're mostly gplv2, but we should get it fixed." (Donald) "It's either the project which inserted the name without version, or the person who added the entry which did it that way." (Adfeno)

• License:GPL
• License:LGPL
• License:MPL

See also

• Antifeatures