The first couple look like issues that need to be addressed, but I haven't
investigated the rest. Please take a look and see if all these issues
are something that need correcting in order to keep PureOS within our
guidelines
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html.
Feel free to ask if you have any questions, or need some help, and
please do let me know how each of these issues are resolved/being resolved.
With all that out of the way, here the issues one user found, edited
down a bit for clarity:
- A while back I was researching a WiFi card, and stumbled onto [this
thread][2] in Purism's official forum, in which a Purism employee
instructs a user to add Debian's non-free repo in order to install the
"firmware-nonfree" package. (Note that these instructions would not work
if PureOS used Linux-libre.) I do not frequent Purism's forum so I don't
know how common an occurance this is, but after finding this thread I
skimmed through the forum I found numerous threads in which the
community helps users install non-free software, something forbidden in
the Trisquel forums.
- PureOS includes package managers configured to point to repositories
containing non-free software, including [snap][3] and [pip][4]. Pip is
an understandable oversight, as it is normally used by developers and it
is not particularly known for being a source of non-free software, but
Snap is just clearly not okay, being targeted toward ordinary users and
full of non-free software.
- The PureOS homepage has a [screenshot][5] of something called
"Purebrowser", which looks like a redranded Firefox, so it seems likely
that Purism is aware of the freedom issues with popular browsers and has
their own alternative, which is good. However, Debian's versions of
[Firefox ESR][6] and [Chromium][7], both with known freedom issues, are
present in PureOS's repo.
- There are many freedom issues already discovered in Debian-based
distros and patched by Trisquel. Some of these issues are introduced by
Ubuntu, but most apply to Debian as well. Not all of them are obvious,
but since Trisquel has already discovered and fixed them .... They are
visible [here][8]. Many of Trisquel's package helpers are for rebranding
or backporting, but I arbitrarily picked a couple that I happened to
know address freedom issues present in both Ubuntu and Debian:
[hplip][8], which prompts the user to download and install a non-free
utility, and [unp][9] whose control file induces the user to install
several non-free packages. I was pleasantly surprised to see that PureOS
[actually has fixed unp][10], but [hplip is unmodified][11] from its
Debian version.
[2]: https://forums.puri.sm/t/wifi-not-working/1249
[3]: https://repo.pureos.net/pureos/pool/main/s/snapd/
[4]: https://repo.pureos.net/pureos/pool/main/p/python-pip/
[5]: https://www.pureos.net/images/screenshot-browser.png
[6]: https://repo.pureos.net/pureos/pool/main/f/firefox-esr/
[7]: https://repo.pureos.net/pureos/pool/main/c/chromium/
[8]:
https://devel.trisquel.info/trisquel/package-helpers/blob/etiona/helpers/make-hplip
[9]:
https://devel.trisquel.info/trisquel/package-helpers/blob/etiona/helpers/make-unp
[10]:
https://source.puri.sm/pureos/packages/unp/-/commit/1746fa3ee48ad69167f3a5d1dc53bf89bfde1652