The Boinc problem

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Larissa

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As some might know, trisquel (https://devel.trisquel.info/trisquel/ubuntu-purge/merge_requests/19) and parabola(https://projects.parabola.nu/blacklist.git/tree/blacklist.txt#n71) deleted Boinc from their repositories. Also the FSF have it on their List of software that does not respect the Free System Distribution Guidelines (https://groups.fsf.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines).

So I contacted Boinc for help, here is the thread: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=10496#64147.
They advice, that: "It might be better for the repository maintainers to open a dialog with the BOINC Project Management Committee, and work through their differences to see if a compromise can be reached.".

So I try to connect: trisquel, parabola, fsf, fsfe, gnewsense, FSF India, FSF France. If I forgot someone please tell me.

Magic Banana

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I do not see much of a reason to contact associations that promote and defend free software (by the way, in France that would be the April and not the FSF France, which is pretty much inactive). It is a (rather simple) technical work that needs to be achieved. In the case of Trisquel, it is about writing a package helper that would only keep the free software BOINC projects and disable the automatic updates of the list: https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/package-helpers

Mzee
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Thank you very much for your efforts, Larissa. What actually happened to your LibreBOINC project? Is the source code still available somewhere?

Larissa

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Libreboinc is paused/dead, I´m not so good with large code. I started so they would do it or at least help me. I hadn´t changed much, so I didn´t saved the changes (most of the changes could have been illegal). Here my old thread: http://trisquel.info/en/forum/libreboinc-totally-free-boinc-only-free-projects-0.

Larissa

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From the Boinc forum:"

Here is an idea on how this could work. I see two concerns raised, according to the FSDG community.

1. Advertises closed-source projects: This obviously means the project list in the Manager that is maintained by the BOINC developers. A solution would be that we add a FSDG field for each project to the project list. Someone from the FSDG community has to supply this information obviously. The Manager gets made aware of this field and the package maintainer of an FSDG compliant distribution can set a compile time flag to enable the use of the FSDG field. The Manager than shows only the projects that have this FSDG flag. All other Managers ignore this flag.

The user is still able to attach to non-FDSG compliant projects which in my opinion should not be changed as it is a conscientious decision of the user to download non-FDSG software. He just has to do the license research on his own.

2. "nonfree files including and relating to api/texfont.{cpp,h} and possible other license issues": I think the api/texfont.{cpp,h} issue was resolved some time ago. There are other files that are part of the BOINC source tree but are not under LGPL but they usually are not required for the Manager or Client and can be omitted by the package maintainer. I couldn't find more specific information regarding the "possible other license issues" stated in the parabola blacklist. My guess is that this relates to older code that is not actively used to build the Client, Manager or Server parts but to give an example on how other projects solved things. I will not comb through the BOINC code and try to find such things but if someone finds a specific example, please make us aware of it so we can fix it.

In general I agree with David, that whether a project releases the results to the public or not is more important than the license of the applications. In some cases only some applications of a project are open-source and some others are not. A project can release new applications in an instant so this has to be monitored (by someone from the FSDG community) too.

"

Larissa

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Someone should contact them and make the list, I don´t know if I´m exact enough to make that list.

Larissa

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Someone should contact them and make the list, I don´t know if I´m exact
enough to make that list.

Larissa

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Some one please help, I don´t want to do this list, since I don´t want to take such a big responsibility,

lembas
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Joined: 05/13/2010

These are probably good candidates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_software_BOINC_projects

I think this is a worthwhile effort, even though machines have become so much better at idling. Still a shame to have so many so powerful boxes just sitting there.

It's good to strive for perfection but one should not be too disappointed if it's not reached. Of course since the default is proprietary, the burden is upon us to prove things things the other way.

lembas
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Joined: 05/13/2010

I think these are good candidates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_software_BOINC_projects

I think this is a worthwhile effort, even though machines have become so much
better at idling. Still a shame to have so many so powerful boxes just
sitting there.

It's good to strive for perfection but one should not be too disappointed if
it's not reached. Of course since the default is proprietary, the burden is
upon us to prove things things the other way.

Larissa

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Joined: 07/12/2014

From the Boinc forum:"

Here is an idea on how this could work. I see two concerns raised, according
to the FSDG community.

1. Advertises closed-source projects: This obviously means the project list
in the Manager that is maintained by the BOINC developers. A solution would
be that we add a FSDG field for each project to the project list. Someone
from the FSDG community has to supply this information obviously. The Manager
gets made aware of this field and the package maintainer of an FSDG compliant
distribution can set a compile time flag to enable the use of the FSDG field.
The Manager than shows only the projects that have this FSDG flag. All other
Managers ignore this flag.

The user is still able to attach to non-FDSG compliant projects which in my
opinion should not be changed as it is a conscientious decision of the user
to download non-FDSG software. He just has to do the license research on his
own.

2. "nonfree files including and relating to api/texfont.{cpp,h} and possible
other license issues": I think the api/texfont.{cpp,h} issue was resolved
some time ago. There are other files that are part of the BOINC source tree
but are not under LGPL but they usually are not required for the Manager or
Client and can be omitted by the package maintainer. I couldn't find more
specific information regarding the "possible other license issues" stated in
the parabola blacklist. My guess is that this relates to older code that is
not actively used to build the Client, Manager or Server parts but to give an
example on how other projects solved things. I will not comb through the
BOINC code and try to find such things but if someone finds a specific
example, please make us aware of it so we can fix it.

In general I agree with David, that whether a project releases the results to
the public or not is more important than the license of the applications. In
some cases only some applications of a project are open-source and some
others are not. A project can release new applications in an instant so this
has to be monitored (by someone from the FSDG community) too.

"

Larissa

I am a member!

Desconectado
Joined: 07/12/2014

Some one please help, I don´t want to do this list, since I don´t want to
take such a big responsibility,