How does Parabola protects users against nonfree software (日本語)
ParabolaはGNU Free System Distribution Guidelinesに準拠しています。 これらの基準は100%自由ソフトウェアであることを超えています。100％自由なソフトウェアであることは、ユーザーが気付かないうちに誤って不自由なソフトウェアをインストールする可能性があり、ユーザーの自由を保証するのに十分ではないことがよくあります。
たとえば、ParabolaはFirefoxの修正版(IceweaselやIcecatなど)を含んでおり、アドオンリポジトリには自由なソフトウェアのみ含まれるようにしています。そうでなければ利用者の中には、すべてのアドオンが完全に自由ソフトウェアであると考え、不自由なものがあることに気づかずにインストールしてしまうおそれがあります。Parabolaはまた、不自由なドライバをインストールすることだけを目的とした自由ソフトウェアも削除します。
Free System Distribution Guidelinesが述べているように 「ほとんどのディストリビューション開発チームは、ディストリビューションがこれらの基準をすべて満たすかどうかを徹底的にチェックするためのリソースを持っていません。そのために、ディストリビューションには時折基準から外れる誤りが含まれることが予想されます(すり抜けた不自由なソフトウェア、など)。 私たちの要件は、ディストリビューション開発者が、報告された誤りを速やかに修正するという確固とした確約をもっていることです。ですから、もし問題を見つけたらParabolaの不具合報告システム、https://labs.parabola.nu/ に報告できます。
Additionally Parabola also doesn't cover everything. For instance:
- The computers you run Parabola on can contain nonfree software. And Parabola might even run that software:
- The BIOS or UEFI of your computer might be nonfree. Once the computer is booted they typically continue to run and Parabola will even run code from it (that is in the ACPI tables).
- Most AMD, ATI or Nvidia Graphic cards / GPUs contain nonfree software that is run both by the BIOS / UEFI and Parabola. That code is even run when using Libreboot.
- All mass storage devices (Hard disks, SSD, microSD, USB keys, etc) contain a builtin nonfree firmware.
- Other peripherals like displays, keyboards, printers, and so on, may also contain nonfree software, depending on the specific peripheral, but it's hard to know.
The FSF has a specification called Respects Your Freedom (RYF) for hardware to address that issue and list hardware that doesn't ship with nonfree software (with some exceptions, make sure to check the criteria).
Also some computers that are RYF certified like the Talos-II Mainboard don't support yet distributions that follows the Free System Distribution Guidelines (FSDG) guidelines, so make sure to also check about distributions support when getting hardware.
The Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification is very strict:
- It only covers hardware being sold (and it makes sure that people can buy the hardware without using nonfree JavaScript, and so on).
- It also makes sure that everything works with free software
So it's also possible to have something equivalent without buying RYF certified hardware:
- If you build yourself similar computers yourself with libreboot. However if you buy compatible hardware online you're on your own with things like nonfree JavaScript. Also sure to check The Libreboot documentation for information on compatibility.
- Many ARM computers can boot with fully free software, and some are supported by Parabola. Here these computers are not certified by with the RYF certification yet because either not everything work with free software (for instance you might lack free software support for hardware video decoding) or because no company tried to apply for the certification. You can check the ARM_Installation_Guide for details on which ARM computers are supported by Parabola.
However a lot of computers (including ARM computers) don't even boot with free software so they are completely useless with freedom.
In addition there are also freedom issues on the Internet and on the web:
- The web and the Internet also contain many software that don't follow the Free System Distribution Guidelines (FSDG) guidelines or are not free software at all: Many software project offer programs to download that are not free software. For instance Arch Linux on which Parabola is based has repositories with nonfree software. Some software like Firefox have addons repositories containing nonfree software. And there are even companies or individual distributing nonfree software. Finding out if every software available is free software or not, and if it respects the Free System Distribution Guidelines (FSDG) guidelines or not is out of the scope of Parabola, however Parabola still has some information on a subset of such software: it maintains a blacklist of known nonfree software in Arch Linux, and some of its packages are patched to not depend on nonfree software, or remove nonfree parts. In addition this wiki also sometimes has information about free software status for some software types, like emulators.
- Many web pages include some JavaScript. With many browsers (like Firefox), that JavaScript is executed within the browser by default. While some of this JavaScript is free software, many isn't. And the fact that the code is in most browsers run automatically also raises some concerns because even if that code is free software, the way it's done forces users to run it, and doesn't leave users much practical freedoms (for instance the freedom to modify the JavaScript and run a modified version on the same page). The JavaScript Trap article has more details on this issue. In several browsers provided by Parabola (like Icecat), in the first start, users can choose if they wish to use the LibreJS addon to only run JavaScript labelled as free software, block all JavaScript, or run it all the JavaScript programs, including those which are not free software.
- Many websites and services track users or make users dependent on the website in some way. Parabola has a package named your-privacy in the nonprism repository to remove support for some of these websites (like Facebook, etc) in some of the packages provided by Parabola.
In addition Parabola also has packages that use third party repositories. They have to be removed or patched if the repositories are known not to have a policy to only contain free software:
- In some cases (like with debootstrap, guix-installer, or iceweasel) the programs are patched.
- But in other cases we are still are working to understand if certain programming languages repositories (like the ones available through pip for instance) have policies to only include free software. If they are found to not have a policy to include only free software we need to remove them.
