Feature changed by: Simon Lees (simotek) Feature #321763, revision 8 Title: Add option to install to not add proprietary repos openSUSE Distribution: New Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Aleksa Sarai (cyphar) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: Currently the openSUSE installer will, by default, add proprietary repositories (openSUSE:Factory:NonFree) to zypper without giving the user an option of disabling it. In the package selection screen, you can only blacklist the repo (not remove it entirely). To allow users to make the decision whether they want to allow a proprietary repo to be added to their system we should have a checkbox like: [ ] Enable proprietary repositories. During the repository selection screen in yast2-installation (when users can select add-on media for the repos). By default we can make it selected, but the main point is that now there's a switch to convert openSUSE into a completely free software distribution. Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: This would be a first step toward being an FSF-compliant distribution (or at least, more acceptable toward the FSF). While not everyone cares about FSF compliance, I personally would like to make sure that on my own computers (and the computers of people I install GNU/Linux for) contain no proprietary software packages. And while the kernel Linux contains non-free blobs (which I don't think we remove) this would be a nice first step toward that goal. Discussion: #1: Oliver Kurz (okurz) (2016-10-18 08:19:39) Currently it's very well possible to deselect the non-free repository from within the installation. AFAIU when you click to add online repositories during the installation in this screen: https://openqa.opensuse.org/tests/284071#step/installation_mode/1 the installer will later on ask in a screen "List of Online Repositories" to deselect individual repositories. Do you want to change the defaults, add another explicit checkbox or something totally different? #2: Aleksa Sarai (cyphar) (2016-10-18 08:26:27) (reply to #1) I think an explicit checkbox on the "Installation Options" screen would be more preferable than it being hidden underneath "Add Online Repositories" and then deselecting it that way -- I actually didn't know you could do it (it's not intuitive). I would like it if we changed the default, but my guess is that would affect users adversely. We can consider changing the default later IMO and just have a checkbox on the screen you mentioned ("Installation Options") which would disable the proprietary repos: [x] Enable proprietary repositories. It could start out checked, but what's important is that there's an explicit option in the installer that means "I want to have an installation free of proprietary packages". I'd be happy to make a PR against yast2-installation, but I'm not sure I'm the best person in the world to write Ruby code. :P #3: Aaron Burgemeister (ab) (2016-12-07 15:45:48) A thought I added to the project mailing list and was asked to put here as an alternative way to present the option for proprietary repositories: If somewhere in the distro's install we provide a way to opt for non-OSS software, I think it should be an opt-out. It would be fun to be able to have that as an opt-in (to non-free software) because it (non-free software) was not wanted by most, but I think in this case the membership probably cares less about non-OSS stuff the way we do it than they care about using perfect FOSS (I'm certainly open to contradiction here; my sample size is small, being just me, myself, and I). One more prompt during an install seems unnecessary. Perhaps on the summary screen before an install, where the Software is listed, a link could be there to disable the non-OSS packages, so it's nothing more than a click, like enabling sshd and opening the firewall port for it. Thinking about this option, vs. the one presented originally, I know that I read the summary screen more than I do the initial repositories screens, usually for to ensure I do not have extra software installed, ports open, partition broken, etc. Maybe have it present in both places to address different types of folks. #4: Per Jessen (pjessen) (2016-12-07 19:10:21) First of all, I think anyone pondering this change ought to ask him/herself if our users really care much about these free software ideals. Second, by all means provide a more easily accessed tickbox to opt out, but let's not make it another step in the installation. + #5: Simon Lees (simotek) (2016-12-07 23:05:46) + If we were to go down this route we should scan the machines hardware + and show a popup telling them which hardware on there machine may not + work as expected due to there choice to use only free software so that + we don't end up with a bunch of bugs about things not working without + people realising this choice led to that. + I also agree this should be a opt out option -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/321763