Re:GNU Mes 0.17: towards bootstrappable builds for GuixSD
by dane-pgp on Thursday December 06, 2018 @05:13PM
(#18622875)
This seems to me like a necessary complement to the efforts around making packages build reproducibly.
It has long been accepted that if a piece of software requires a non-Free compiler to build it, then that piece of software is de facto non-Free too. Taking that to its logical extreme, a piece of software isn't Free unless it can be built by a compiler whose recursive sequence of meta-compilers leads back to a minimal, audited binary seed.
Fortunately, once this has been done once (or multiple times independently, producing the same results), all future compilations and software can potentially enjoy the benefits of the process.
It has long been accepted that if a piece of software requires a non-Free compiler to build it, then that piece of software is de facto non-Free too. Taking that to its logical extreme, a piece of software isn't Free unless it can be built by a compiler whose recursive sequence of meta-compilers leads back to a minimal, audited binary seed.
Fortunately, once this has been done once (or multiple times independently, producing the same results), all future compilations and software can potentially enjoy the benefits of the process.