Split FOSS and Proprietary repositories

[gjsman]

Several distributions including Fedora and Purism have had worries about including Flathub by default because it contains Proprietary software by default (for example, https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1462548, https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/flathub-and-proprietary-software/273).

For this reason, please consider splitting the Proprietary and FOSS sides of Flathub into separate repositories, so that distributions can ship only with the FOSS repository by default.

[TingPing]

This has been discussed before but I'm not sure there was any conclusion: CC @ramcq @alexlarsson

[ramcq]

It's in our mind behind the work @alexlarsson is doing for https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/flatpak/2018-September/001259.html - but to meet the Purism requirements, to be "FSF approved", having a separate free and non-free repository is not acceptable due to referring to non-free software (Debian is not, for example). The idea was that we could potentially apply a server-side filter and produce a subset of the repository summary/metadata files which contained only free-as-in-freedom licensed things, and create a clone "librehub" (except not this name) website/domain which was the same as Flathub but with the proprietary software removed, and share the CDN/cache/objects etc infrastructure.

[gjsman]

@ramcq Perhaps this could be simple as a custom list. "librehub" just takes "flathub" and returns everything except the packages on the "nonfree" list. This would be pretty quick to implement, just a return all WHERE name != Names On The List. Ideally something more long-term would be created, but it wouldn't be a bad short term solution.

[gjsman]

As for references to non-free software, perhaps we could have software "aliases." For example, If my package refers to something proprietary (e.g. NVIDIA drivers), give the user a prompt asking if you want to install the non free software, do nothing (don't install the drivers), or install something else (e.g. open source drivers). Complicated... just thinking out loud.

[4jNsY6fCVqZv]

Hello, the problem still exists and contains some ethical implications for me, which unfortunately lead to the fact that I must exclude the use of Flathub. What are your current thoughts about solving this problem for Free Software only users? @ramcq @alexlarsson

[gjsman]

@ramcq I've been revisiting this as I've been playing with Fedora Silverblue, where the lack of Flathub as a default is a serious problem (as Silverblue only supports Flatpaks for apps, and Fedora's Flatpak repository is much smaller). IMHO, I don't think that FSF approval is as much of a priority as getting Flathub into Silverblue would be. Even if splitting the repos doesn't get FSF approval, at least it might get Fedora approval, which could be extremely useful in the near future. Fedora has plans to make Silverblue the preferred OS type (instead of the current Workstation) and has been working towards that. Getting this sorted out before that happens needs to be a high priority.

[4jNsY6fCVqZv]

Are there people out there who would like to contribute to a FOSS compatible solution?

[A6GibKm]

@gjsman flathub cant be the default for Fedora as it conflicts with their policy. Fedora can only ship stuff built with their own infrastructure, and flathub is not theirs.

[razzeee]

The usecase has been solved by adding/using subsets now, so I think this should be closed

[bbhtt]

Documented here https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-users/installation#subsets, closing.