Debian adds LoongArch support [LWN.net]

The Debian project has added the LoongArch architecture to its ports collection.

After an initial manual bootstrap of roughly 200 packages, two buildds are now building packages for the newly added "loong64" port with the help of qemu-user. After enough packages have been built for the port to be self-hosting, we're planning to replace these two buildds with real hardware hosted at Loongson.

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Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 16, 2023 14:30 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (74 responses)

I know politics is unseemly in the discussion of Free Software, but Loongson is on the US's trade-restriction Entity List.

This would (I assume) make it problematic for US-based Debian developers to work on this.

And I know I'm likely to be flamed for this because of the Free Software Freedoms, but I'm not so sure the Free Software community should be helping a country that is the antithesis of freedom.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 16, 2023 15:38 UTC (Wed) by Paf (subscriber, #91811) [Link] (1 responses)

It seems hard to see how participation in a shared project for which there are not direct financial rewards would run afoul of those sanctions? But I am far from an expert on the restrictions.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 16, 2023 16:52 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

It is plausible that shipping software to buildds under Loongson's control qualifies as export under the terms of the EAR, and thus that once "replace these two buildds with real hardware hosted at Loongson" happens, a US DD can't upload to the archive because they know the software will be shipped to Loongson.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 16, 2023 15:53 UTC (Wed) by federico (guest, #109225) [Link] (39 responses)

I think we can't call the "Free Software" community (world-wide distributed) to protect other freedoms or rights. The perception of what freedom means might change geographically, temporally, and culturally. Even within the software world it changes.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 16, 2023 16:28 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (38 responses)

> I think we can't call the "Free Software" community (world-wide distributed) to protect other freedoms or rights.

The "free software community" can help undermine attempts to take away other freedoms/rights, but that's about it.

...At the end of the day, the only thing that protects rights is force.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 16, 2023 21:12 UTC (Wed) by federico (guest, #109225) [Link] (37 responses)

The point is, who judges if something needs protection? And this is subject to our perception of the world. The free software community shouldn't be weaponized against who live a different life. Otherwise, let's call it the "Free-for-friends Software Community".

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 16, 2023 21:38 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (36 responses)

Free Software is all about Freedom... it's right there in the name. I don't think that excusing a regime that is manifestly against freedom by saying it's a "different life" is in keeping with the ideals of Free Software.

As the GP wrote, the only way to protect anything is with force, but at the same time, a movement that espouses Freedom right in its name probably shouldn't be helping a regime that is opposed to freedom.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 16, 2023 23:07 UTC (Wed) by federico (guest, #109225) [Link] (35 responses)

Free software is all about Freedom, in software.

I'm not excusing anyone for anything bad they might do. Just trying to say to open the mind to different understanding of the societies. We have all tons of laws to restrict our freedom in behaviours that we consider acceptable for the society we live in. We call freedom the set of laws/restrictions we have. The "manifestly against freedom" you refer to is against the freedom/restrictions you have in the country you live in this period of time. Chances are that in the same place nn years ago, some today's freedoms were not acquired freedoms.

Even in software you see this difference in perception. Free Software, Open Source Software, dozens of different licences. All of them trying to give an answer to the meaning of freedom in software ... and not agreeing.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 16, 2023 23:35 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (34 responses)

Yes, I understand. And I also understand why Free Software advocates might think that the wider right to Freedom is outside their bailiwick.

The "manifestly against freedom" you refer to is against the freedom/restrictions you have in the country you live in this period of time.

Our understanding of freedom has expanded as time has passed. I don't know anyone who would consider massacring pro-democracy demonstrators as they were in 1989 to be a good thing. Nor do I know anyone who considers using anti-espionage laws to jail pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong to be a good thing. These things are objectively against freedom.

And I think that without personal freedom, Freedom in software is not very meaningful.

Again: I get why some Free Software advocates think this is outside their bailiwick. But that makes me very sad, not to mention pessimistic for the impact technology will have on society. I worked in software development for 33 years and have retired from that.

I don't think I could go back to it because I see so much unethical use of software and so much willingness of software developers (not just Free Software developers...) to provide software to people they know will use it unethically. From Google's "Web Integrity API" to the software developers who let Amazon time warehouse workers to the second and force up their productivity regardless of health consequences, software developers are willingly (and sometimes eagerly) helping to make the world worse.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 10:53 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (33 responses)

Part of the challenge here is that the USA also has significant anti-freedom issues of its own, and yet US citizens are preaching to the world about how the USA is "free", but their countries should do better. And this happens both with businesses (as you've described), but also with your government rules; for example, the US has previously criticised African countries for not having rules barring someone convicted of election offences from the presidency, and yet the US has, it turns out, no such rules either.

These sorts of things add up over time to a perception that it's one rule for you, and a stricter set for me, and that you consider your anti-Freedom issues to be "minor", or "one-off errors", while mine are considered to be significant. In turn, this makes it challenging to have the conversations about Freedom, since it's all too easy to turn the discussion into "I am complaining about the mote in your eye while ignoring the beam in mine".

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 12:37 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (32 responses)

I don't live in the USA and I agree that its citizens' freedoms are being eroded, but it is qualitatively different from what's going on in places like Russia, China, North Korea, Afghanistan, and so on.

One way to get a feel for relative freedoms of countries is to look at which countries people are seeking refuge from, and which countries they are seeking refuge in.

Another is to look at the Freedom House's freedom index which has well-defined and IMO defensible tests for how free a country is.

In pretty every measure imaginable, the United States scores much higher than China. Is the USA perfect? Of course not. Is it "free"? Yes, says Freedom House, with a score of 83/100. (This compares to 9/100 for China.)

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 13:10 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (31 responses)

Right, but when the same person applauds things that the US is doing that would erode its score on those metrics, while also criticising China for being "anti-freedom" (which happens - currently, significant chunks of the Republican Party leadership are doing just that), it damages the "soft power" the US and its allies need in order to push for more freedoms elsewhere. This combination damages everyone pushing for more freedom, since it makes it look like those pushing for freedom in the abstract are doing so simply to damage places that don't meet their demands.

This differs from pushing for specific freedoms, as Free Software tries to - justifying each of the four freedoms the FSF defines individually, and explaining why each of them is a net good is not difficult. But arguing for a bundling of "be more free" brings you into the problem territory - where you're combining voices with people like Godfrey Bloom in the UK, or Ron DeSantis in the USA, who also make that argument about foreign countries, while calling for a reduction in freedoms at home.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 13:28 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (30 responses)

when the same person applauds things that the US is doing that would erode its score on those metrics, while also criticising China for being "anti-freedom"

Just because some people are hypocritical, it does not excuse the oppression inflicted by the Chinese government on its citizens. It also doesn't excuse the growing authoritarianism of the GOP, as you rightly pointed out, but at least currently, the United States is objectively free compare to China.

I do agree that bringing non-software ideals into the equation leads to problems. On the other hand, even the four software freedoms speak to ethical values that are not part of the realm of software development. I think ignoring non-software freedom is equally problematic... doing so is simply a salve to the consciences of people who deep down know that they are helping some very nasty actors, but don't want to stop doing that.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 13:47 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (10 responses)

> doing so is simply a salve to the consciences of people who deep down know that they are helping some very nasty actors, but don't want to stop doing that.

This is a specious argument. >99% of the time, the code is just a neutral tool; the one using it is the one that bears the responsibility for how they use it. Should hammer manufacturers lie awake at night or even stop making hammers because some buyers use their product to commit assault or murder?

It is damn near certain that some of the Free Software I've written has been used to directly kill people [1]. Conversely, that same code has been used to save other people's lives [2]. Does one cancel out the other? Does it matter? Consider that the overwhelming majority of its users [3] probably used it to send email and look at cat pictures. Is this "a salve to my conscience" or should I somehow have taken steps to prevent those other uses?

[I] it was used by a certain high-profile military robot manufacturer, and deployed in Iraq.
[2] The same manufacturer also made bomb-disposal robots that were sold to domestic police forces.
[3] Ie anyone with a common (at the time) chipset in their PC's wifi adapter.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 14:11 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (9 responses)

Should hammer manufacturers lie awake at night or even stop making hammers because some buyers use their product to commit assault or murder?

Of course not. But should hammer manufacturers enter into an agreement to sell hammers to an organization that is widely known to use hammers to kill people? I don't think so, though I can see how you might disagree.

It is damn near certain that some of the Free Software I've written has been used to directly kill people.

It's highly likely that some Free Software I've written has been used in similar ways, at least by the administration of nasty organizations. But again: If one of those nasty organizations had contacted me and asked me to help port my software to their platform, I'd have refused.

Some thing are not in my control, and others are. Collaborating (or not) with Loongson is definitely something within developers' control.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 14:51 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> But again: If one of those nasty organizations had contacted me and asked me to help port my software to their platform, I'd have refused.

Going back to my example, that "nasty organization" funded a non-trivial portion of the Free Software wifi driver effort that everyone else was able to use for non-nasty purposes. Similarly, the internet itself, satellite-based navigation systems, and much more owe their existence to "nasty organizations".

> Some thing are not in my control, and others are. Collaborating (or not) with Loongson is definitely something within developers' control.

Longsoon is only a "nasty organization" by indirect association. The same can probably be said for everyone on this forum.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:07 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (7 responses)

You're now arguing over the degree to which Loongson are responsible for the effects of complying with local military demands to allow them access to their technology, as opposed to the degree to which you are personally responsible for the effects of funding your local military via taxes, and the degree to which other semiconductor companies are responsible for complying with local military demands.

This is not an easy argument, ethically speaking, since we're discussing you as an individual within a much larger system; the US's EAR Entity List is a simple solution that says "US allies are fine, regardless of their ethics, countries we disagree with are not fine, regardless of their ethics", and that's not a good answer to the ethical dilemma - only to the political dilemma.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:12 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (5 responses)

Yes, of course. But I can choose to collaborate (or not) with Loonson. I can't choose not to pay taxes unless I want to ruin my life. If I thought my taxes were funding something so heinous that I'd be willing to ruin my life, I'd stop paying them, but I don't.

And yes, it's not an easy dilemma. But I think it is unethical of developers to completely push aside the ethical questions by disavowing any control they have over who they collaborate with.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:22 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (4 responses)

You've already said that you can choose to not pay taxes, at a cost to yourself. But you are condemning Loongson because it (effectively) has not been willing to refuse to pay taxes.

Why are you permitted to say "the cost to me of not paying local taxes is too high", but Loongson is not permitted to say "the cost to us of not paying local taxes is too high"?

Similarly, why is it bad to collaborate with Loongson, but not to collaborate with IBM, SUSE or other companies in the US and Canada? The only reason Loongson is on the US EAR Entity List is that it's not willing to refuse to allow its local government to buy its semiconductors for military purposes - but many of the companies not on the EAR list are not only willing to allow their local governments to buy their products for military purposes, but also to actively work on military applications for those products?

As an ethical argument, this boils down to "my country is right, yours is wrong", and that's problematic. There may well be practical reasons to not collaborate with Loongson (e.g. "I live in the USA, and my local prosecutors will treat me as an enemy collaborator if I do so"), but that's not an ethical basis for that decision.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 18:17 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (3 responses)

The problem is that Loonsong is forced to collaborate with a dictatorship. It really has no choice whatsoever. Companies in the United States are of course subject to government rules and requests, but there is a legal framework in place for them to challenge requests they think are unconstitutional or improper.

And yes, it does boil down to the fact that the Chinese government is far more oppressive than governments in democratic countries, especially liberal Western democracies. I don't think anyone can credibly dispute that.

The argument you are making, IMO, is unethical, which is: We can't hold anyone to account because nobody is perfect. It's called Whataboutism.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 18, 2023 9:12 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (2 responses)

I think it is quite easy to dispute your claim about oppression. I think a strong case can be made that the USA is one of the most oppressive states on the planet the last 50 odd years, if we consider foreign policy and civilian body count.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 18, 2023 18:13 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (1 responses)

Despite some very bad things the USA has done, I do not think it's credible to rate it as badly as the Chinese Communist Party if we're talking the last 50-odd years.

Regardless, even if you think the USA is as bad as or worse than China, then that is an argument for not collaborating with the US government. It's not an argument for collaborating with the Chinese government.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 18, 2023 22:23 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> Regardless, even if you think the USA is as bad as or worse than China, then that is an argument for not collaborating with the US government. It's not an argument for collaborating with the Chinese government.

Here's the thing -- I have never collaborated with either, yet I'm only two degrees of separation from both.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:17 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Longsoon almost certainly has no choice but to collaborate with the Chinese government and military. I don't think Longsoon itself is the nasty organization here. However, software developers who do have choice over who they collaborate with are IMO being unethical if they disavow that choice and don't take ethical questions into consideration when deciding who they'll collaborate with.

I agree it's a difficult argument, but ignoring it is not the right response. I would not collaborate with Longsoon or the Chinese government. Others will make different choices. But pretending that the choices have no ethical consequences is, as I said, simply a salve to the conscience.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 14:06 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (15 responses)

But the problem is that when I can draw a direct line between the politics of someone telling me that my country is not free enough, and the politics of someone who's making their own country less free, it becomes easy to dismiss the whole bundle of "freedom" as "my country over yours".

Hence the need to focus on specific ideals; focusing purely on software freedom when talking about software means that it becomes harder to dismiss you for the hypocrisy of other people who are very happy for specific breaches of freedoms to take place, as long as it's their country doing that, and not another country.

This is also why it's worth contexualising software freedom in your system of ethics - you're telling people that yes, you'll give them the Four Freedoms, and you're doing so because you believe that it is ethically correct that everyone can study anything that interests them to see how it functions.

But balancing freedoms against each other and saying "you cannot have this freedom, because you are taking this unrelated freedom away from other people" gets people into seeing freedoms as something you can trade off against each other; does this justify stealing code from a Canadian author for your non-free product because Canadian troops under NATO command shot people in your home country? After all, we'd all agree that killing people takes away their freedom of action...

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 14:15 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (14 responses)

I understand your argument, but I disagree with it. No country is perfect and pretty much every person is hypocritical to some degree. But I still maintain that it is unethical to promote Software Freedom without promoting Freedom in general, and that it is unethical to collaborate with organizations that are widely known to be highly oppressive.

I'm also not suggesting that licenses should be modified to say that Free Software cannot be used in non-Free countries; that would open up a can of worms. I am suggesting that developers need to think about the ethical consequences of collaborating with oppressive organizations.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:01 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (11 responses)

And this is the crux of our disagreement - I believe that you should explain the ethical reasoning that leads you to promote Software Freedom, but not push for "Freedom" in general at the same time.

When you push a country to be "Free" by your lights as part of pushing software freedom, you open up the rejection of software freedom because your "Freedom" is often hypocritical as a whole; you're happy for your state to imprison people for very long periods of time because they have a different political opinion to you (e.g. that individuals taking certain drugs for recreational purposes is fine), but not for another state to imprison people for their political opinions.

When you explain Software Freedom as one aspect of a deeper ethical thought process (e.g. "I believe that you should be permitted to examine anything that affects you to determine how it works and why, hence I believe that you should have the source code for software"), you're pushing for a specific case of a more general principle, and hoping that people pick up on the general principle ("if you use it, you should be able to examine it to learn how it works") from which you've derived the special case. They can then apply that principle elsewhere, and hopefully come to further freedoms from the same principle - but they're not able to point at the specific freedoms you've advocated for and say "because you don't actually let people have this freedom, your claims about freedom are just hypocrisy, and anti-us sentiment".

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 18:23 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (9 responses)

And this is the crux of our disagreement - I believe that you should explain the ethical reasoning that leads you to promote Software Freedom, but not push for "Freedom" in general at the same time.

Eh? I am pushing for Freedom in general at the same time! That's the point.

I'm not sure why you assume I am happy for my state to imprison recreational drug users, because I'm not. I am against that also. (Canada's rate of imprisonment on drug use offenses is tiny... roundoff error compared to the USA, especially since cannabis was legalized.)

I posted earlier, but your argument is nothing but Whataboutism.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 18, 2023 9:05 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (7 responses)

It's not necessarily "whataboutism" - I don't think farnz is trying to deflect away from issues with the Chinese state. Rather, trying to find some sensible philosophy as to how and where to draw the lines.

E.g., if you are saying that any company (or employees thereof) with any contracting ties to (the military of)? any state that has ongoing human rights issues should be excluded from Free Software communities, then wouldn't this exclude many companies from western (or western aligned) countries, such as the USA, UK, Israel, etc.?

What is the general principle you are applying?

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 18, 2023 12:25 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (6 responses)

The general principle I'm applying is that Free Software developers shouldn't assist a government that actively oppresses its citizens, is committing genocide, acts as a loan shark to effectively take control over poor developing countries, and aggressively threatens its neighbors.

No country is perfect, but we have to draw the line somewhere. I think drawing it using data from Freedom House's index and from resolutions passed by many democratically-elected legislatures is more defensible than saying "because no country is perfect, we'll simply close our eyes and sing 'la-la-la' as we help out a dictatorship."

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 18, 2023 13:24 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (5 responses)

> The general principle I'm applying is that Free Software developers shouldn't assist a government that actively oppresses its citizens, is committing genocide, acts as a loan shark to effectively take control over poor developing countries, and aggressively threatens its neighbors.

Those words have applied to the USA (ie my own nation) many, many shameful times over the course of its existence; even as recently as a few years ago -- and arguably still do to this day.

> No country is perfect, but we have to draw the line somewhere. I think drawing it using data from Freedom House's index and from resolutions passed by many democratically-elected legislatures is more defensible

This is at least a consistent position to take, and I think that's all that was asked for.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 18, 2023 23:26 UTC (Fri) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (4 responses)

It's off topic for this forum so I apologise, but like dskoll I find this implied moral equivalence between the USA and China to be repugnant. It is offensive to the Chinese people suffering under the CCP regime --- the Uyghurs, the organ harvestees, the persecuted churches, the Falun Gong, and the everyday citizens who have no say in their government and whose every communications medium is subject to strict and petty government censorship. (And like dskoll, I'm not American; I lived and worked in the USA for a time, a long time ago.)

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 19, 2023 0:24 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (3 responses)

> It's off topic for this forum so I apologise, but like dskoll I find this implied moral equivalence between the USA and China to be repugnant.

It is only a moral equivalence insofar as the criteria that dskoll (originally) espoused would apply equally to most major nations, when in fact he was actually advocating for a more nuanced (and IMO morally defensible) stance.

That said, "nuanced" in this context is an acknowledgement that you believe freedoms should not be absolute. I find this ironic given the heaps of disdain being heaped upon Red Hat for placing some restrictions/consequences upon exercising freedoms.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 22, 2023 14:52 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (2 responses)

“My liberty ends where yours begins”

Even enlightment authors recognized that absolute freedoms are not workable in the real world. You can at best achieve some form of balancing act.

Arguing for absolutes is dangerous because it is real easy to get disilusionned and switch to a destructive since this can not be achieved nothing matters stance. Decent people compromise every day in life.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 22, 2023 15:27 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> Arguing for absolutes is dangerous because it is real easy to get disilusionned and switch to a destructive since this can not be achieved nothing matters stance. Decent people compromise every day in life.

"Pick two of three. Any two"

And that includes freedoms. I'm well known I suspect for railing against freedom of speech. Not because I don't believe freedom of speech isn't a good thing (it is), but because freedom of speech destroys other things.

The American Constitution guarantees the freedom to seek happiness. But free speech and the pursuit of wealth means that America figures very low in the Western World's happiness index. From pizza's remarks it sounds like the Han Chinese quite possibly are higher up the happiness index than your typical American ...

Cheers,
Wol

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 22, 2023 15:55 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> The American Constitution guarantees the freedom to seek happiness.

Not quite -- "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" is in the US declaration of independence.

The actual constitution doesn't state anything about rights, at least not until the bill of rights that comprised the first ten adopted amendments.

But even the bill of rights just says "No person shall [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;"

Happiness (or the pursuit thereof) is conspicuously absent.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 24, 2023 8:23 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

I assume that you are happy for your state to imprison recreational drug users, because your state does so, and you've already said that if your state did things you were seriously unhappy with, you'd accept the penalties for refusing to pay taxes.

I would also note that the list we're discussing here is not a list of ethically bad entities - it's a list of entities that the United States of America deems opposed to its goals. As a result, there are entities in China whose behaviour is far worse than Loongson (actively manufacturing things used only for oppression) who are not on the list because the cost to American businesses of losing Chinese suppliers is deemed too high, while entities not of use to American firms go on the list because there is no cost to the USA from people choosing AMD, Qualcomm or other vendors instead of Loongson.

And this is why I find the claims about ethics grating - the list has nothing to do with ethics, just with whether the USA considers you a worthy compromise, or someone it can afford to not do business with. There are entities that are far worse ethically that are not on the list (ones who supply equipment for use against the Uyghurs, for example), and the ethical breach that Loongson is accused of is "permitting its local government to purchase its products".

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 19:00 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

> you're happy for your state to imprison people for very long periods of time because they have a different political opinion to you (e.g. that individuals taking certain drugs for recreational purposes is fine),

This is sleight-of-hand. Those people are imprisoned because people voted (indirectly) to make drug-taking a crime. They're not imprisoned for the opinion that "taking certain drugs for recreational purposes is fine"; that is not a crime, in the USA at least, and very large numbers of people hold that opinion and none of them are ever charged on that basis.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:11 UTC (Thu) by timon (subscriber, #152974) [Link] (1 responses)

> collaborating with oppressive organizations

This post is about collaborating with Loongson. Would you say that Loongson is an oppressive organization?

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 18:18 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Longsoon is effectively under the control of the Chinese government. And it certainly does collaborate with the Chinese government and military.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 15:03 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (2 responses)

As an aside, growing authoritarianism is a problem in segments *across* the political spectrum. Not just in one particular political party, in one particular western nation. Indeed, there is a strong argument to be made - that I agree with - that there is a "liberal----------authoritarian" political axis (liberal as in valuing individual autonomy), as a distinct political dimension axis to other axes, such as social and economic axes.

I.e., there are many "left" people (e.g., as viewed on social or economic dimensions) who are quite authoritarian (some to very ugly degrees), and there are many "right" people (in economic or social terms) who are quite liberal on individual freedom.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 17, 2023 16:26 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

> Indeed, there is a strong argument to be made - that I agree with - that there is a "liberal----------authoritarian" political axis (liberal as in valuing individual autonomy), as a distinct political dimension axis to other axes, such as social and economic axes.

Political compasses have been a thing for decades now. You can draw several axes (liberal/authoritarian, state/market controlled economy, conservative/progressive) and you will be able to find political parties in any combination of them. The idea that they are linked somehow seems mostly prevalent in countries with two-party systems. Multi-party systems in Europe produce political parties that are all over the map, see e.g.: https://i.redd.it/x1phskkt4q251.jpg

Comparing parties on a single axis rarely produces useful results.

But yes, there is a gentle movement to the right, the EP elections next year will be very interesting.

Maybe this is getting too philosophical (was: Debian adds LoongArch support)

Posted Aug 18, 2023 9:09 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Yes, indeed, politics is multi-dimensional - I hope I wasn't arguing that that was some new idea. (Seems I did word it that way - sorry ;) ). But "tendency to authoritarianism" is definitely not a "left" / "right" thing. Just wanted to make that clear.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 16, 2023 17:28 UTC (Wed) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link] (5 responses)

I think this is more than "politics" (though I also think the political discussion is reasonable to have) - the question is not just whether it's problematic in a moral sense, the question is whether it's problematic in a legal sense. You can choose not to get involved in certain political or moral discussions, but you don't really have a choice about legal obligations.

The Linux kernel recently rejected driver patches from a Russian military contractor on the grounds that a lot of companies working on kernel infrastructure will have to care about sanctions: https://lwn.net/Articles/926798/

Do any Linux distros have legal advice on this situation? I know Debian has previously paid lawyers for thoughts about stuff like ZFS redistribution (and, I think, about crypto exports in the more distant past) - do they need to get some thoughts on this?

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 16, 2023 18:16 UTC (Wed) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link] (4 responses)

Oh no, are we back to the days of debian-nonus :(

I have no particular connections with the Debian porters, chip architects or .cn.

Debian has had to drop architectures from main into ports in the past because the hardware just wasn't viable any more - hppa, alpha

I think the particular risk is not that this is currently a port, but if it ever got elevated into main there is
always the chance that some sort of sanctions could be imposed and that the chips would suddenly be made of unobtainium.

That said, if sanctions on E. Asian nations were imposed by anyone, the worlds chip supply would vanish in a heartbeat because sanctions would become mutual in an instant and the world's electronics supply chain would die horribly. We've already had a foretaste of this in the years of COVID and the shortages thereafter.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 16, 2023 19:17 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes, a lot of electronic parts are made in CN, so full sanctions are not viable for the West or for China. However, I think that democratic countries need to start reducing their dependence on non-democratic countries for critical supplies, lest they be held hostage. Will it be incredibly expensive and difficult? Sure. But is it worth it? IMO, absolutely. As we've seen with Russia/Ukraine, a non-democratic country can do all sorts of things to advance its cause, such as deliberately causing a huge worldwide food shortage, if it thinks it can gain leverage. This is much more difficult for a democratic country to do because public opinion actually might mean something.

IMO, China will not constrain the types of behavior it resorts to if it thinks it can gain a geopolitical advantage.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 22, 2023 15:12 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (2 responses)

> This is much more difficult for a democratic country to do because public opinion actually might mean something.

“Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…“

Don’t get complacent, history tells us that democracy is perfectly capable of horrors, just slightly less than other forms of government.

(For example the same man that is responsible for the rise of mass litteracy in France, during the early years of the IIId republic, and is commemorated in most French towns, approved the conquest of Indochina, that ended up in the Vietnam War, agent orange and lots of very unpleasant events. And you can find similar examples in all democratic countries. Democracies do not like to talk about their own failures just like authoritarian countries. But they are perfectly faillible. More so when their citizens look the other way because they believe problems happen to others.)

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 24, 2023 9:21 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

The power of democracy is the ability to dispose of a bad government without a war of succession. Beyond that, like any form of government, it depends on the people with power (which includes the voter base in a democracy) being both well-informed and well-intentioned.

If, for example, people in a democracy believe that foreigners are less-than-human, then you can see extreme human rights violations, because the democracy doesn't accept that they're doing anything wrong. My country is showing the beginnings of this with the so-called "migrant crisis", where we're not handling asylum claims quickly (a majority of claims take over 6 months to reach the first decision point), and we're handling this by increasing the cruelty we impose on asylum seekers, as a "deterrent" to migrants, rather than speeding up the process, because the people as a group "want" to see fewer immigrants.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 24, 2023 10:53 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

And as a consequence, one can note that democracy within a country does nothing to stop that country committing atrocities against people in other countries.

If we did a body count of civilians killed by all the countries around the world, we would find that some of the top runners on that list never get sanctioned by western nations. (For they are western nations, or "friendly" states).

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 1:55 UTC (Thu) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link] (19 responses)

I think the key question here is: does adding loong64 support help the government or the people of China?

I have no particular faith that China will experience a popular revolution, or a transformation to a less authoritarian, more democratic government that respects human rights more. But it's not the place of Free Software to compel that kind of change.

I think Debian adding loong64 support is basically neutral. I don't think it advances a greater Freedom, but I don't think it contributes to suffering either.

I'd never try to persuade someone that they should work on it, but I can't bring myself to excoriate those who do either.

My quarrel with the loongarch is that it's Yet Another ISA that isn't particularly interesting, and just adds to the maintenance burden.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 9:01 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (18 responses)

I think you'll find, almost universally, that Chinese people absolutely do not want a popular revolution. They've already experienced one already - still in living memory for many Chinese, and the younger ones have heard all the stories from their parents. They went through all kinds of stuff, from famine to the Cultural Revolution, they have a lot of very unpleasant memories of those immediate-post-revolution times. They've spent... 40 years building a modern economy, and many Chinese have been lifted out of starvation-level poverty. There is absolutely no appetite to go back to revolution, in any Chinese people I know and have discussed with - there's no point even asking such a question to a Chinese person, it's somewhat cliched and indicative of naive western understanding to them I suspect, if not a bit offensive.

Change will happen slowly and carefully in China.

The other thing they absolutely do not trust is Westerners telling them they know better what is good for China. Again, coming to Chinese people with that kind of attitude will be taken as proof of how little Westerners know China, its people, and its history (and their own history of the Western powers in China).

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 10:21 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (7 responses)

Have you talked to Chinese people from Hong Kong and Taiwan? How about mainland Chinese people in underground churches or ethnic minorities? I find they have a rather diverse set of perspectives.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 10:28 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (6 responses)

There are some exceptions... sure. I should have qualified, Han Chinese who were born and reared in revolutionary China.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 18:53 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (5 responses)

It sounds like by "revolution" you mean the Cultural Revolution, which is a bit confusing because to most readers "revolution" implies a rebellion against the government, whereas the Cultural Revolution was in fact orchestrated by Mao for his political purposes.

It was certainly a disastrous time and I agree that most mainlanders, even the most oppressed, don't want a repeat of that kind of thing.

However, in *my* experience, even many mainlander Han Chinese privately denounce the CCP once they're safely out of its reach. They don't want a violent revolution, but they'd love to see it gone.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 18, 2023 9:20 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (4 responses)

I meant the revolutionary Chinese state. I.e. 1949+.

The Cultural Revolution was instigated by Mao and/or his wife, obviously it turned into a mass social movement. Absolutely bizarre.

I didn't say mainland Han Chinese want no change. I think they do want to see changes, but, as you say, they don't want any sudden revolutions. They value stability too. That said, Chinese IME don't voluntarily discuss this stuff unless prodded into it - and I don't really do this anymore, cause most don't really like to. And the views I were getting were mostly the same, within a set of boundaries, as characterised (IMLE).

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 18, 2023 10:00 UTC (Fri) by joib (subscriber, #8541) [Link] (2 responses)

> That said, Chinese IME don't voluntarily discuss this stuff unless prodded into it - and I don't really do this anymore, cause most don't really like to. And the views I were getting were mostly the same, within a set of boundaries, as characterised (IMLE).

In a country where airing your political opinions can kill your career, get you thrown into jail, or worse, you can't really trust people to be honest about such things.

Think of it this way, if you lived in such an oppressive country, and then some foreign journalist stops you on the street, pushes a video camera in your face and asks you whether you love your president. What do you answer? Answer truthfully, and some people watching the news on the other side of the planet whom you've never met might get a warm and fuzzy feeling "aww, even the inhabitants of this horrible country hate their president, just like we do!", but then you risk getting thrown into jail and tortured, and the rest of your family will lose their jobs etc. Or do you answer "Yes, I love Mr President very much, thank you!", go on with your day while shaking your head at the idiot Western journalist asking such stupid questions and expecting people to answer honestly. Gee, really hard choice that one.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 18, 2023 12:20 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm going on discussions I've had in private settings (not TV journalist) with mainland reared Han Chinese, when abroad in Europe. So none of those things really apply.

As above, a lot of Chinese want stability and prosperity above all else, because they have fairly vivid experience of starvation (inc. watching family die), either by first hand accounts from parents/grandparents or they lived it themselves - which arose because of revolution and then a massive experimental reorganisation of the entire economy (especially the agrarian parts). They have come a long way since then, and China is a lot richer today.

That's my experience from mainland Chinese I've discussed with.

Their view of their country is also generally a lot more positive than how you've put it - even if they acknowledge short-comings in the current one-party system. And yes, this surprised me. Many of them (IMLE) would even consider their system - with its flaws - better than current western systems. (yep!).

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 18, 2023 12:22 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

And to be clear, my views would have been very much like yours in the past. Until I spent time with Chinese people, and visited China, and came to realise that most (Han, mainland) Chinese (IMLE) have quite a different view and different concerns to the ones we in the west think they should have.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 19, 2023 0:20 UTC (Sat) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

It's kind of impressive how the CCP has managed to turn fear of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution into support for the system that enabled those things in the first place.

It's understandable that people support autocracy while it produces good economic results for them and they can ignore the suffering of the oppressed. The problem is that autocracy is brittle. Xi bungled the COVID exit and (much worse) relaxed the one-child policy far too late. It is quite likely he will make more disastrous mistakes and there are no checks or balances to stop him. (Yes, the less autocratic system Deng put in place worked better, but it was always extremely vulnerable to being taken over by another autocrat.)

BTW the COVID-related protests were a good reveal of the simmering discontent with the CCP.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 12:40 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Change will happen slowly and carefully in China.

There is no reason to believe that China will become more free in the foreseeable future. The ruling party has no incentive to allow this and every incentive to disallow it, and its total control of the state makes it much too powerful for ordinary people to confront.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 20:06 UTC (Thu) by dvdeug (guest, #10998) [Link]

> Change will happen slowly and carefully in China.

There's a lot of history that tells us that change will not monotonically happen slowly in the correct direction. China has cracked down on Hong Kong, and Xi Jinping removed term limits, moving China away from oligarchy towards an autocracy.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 20:35 UTC (Thu) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link] (6 responses)

I don't think you understand my attitude at all. I think that the people who live in a country should determine its form of government and who occupies the offices of that government.

I was explicitly arguing that we SHOULDN'T involve ourselves in China's internal affairs. Yes, we can (and should) express our disapproval of China's government's violations of human rights, just as we should that of our own countries.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 21:57 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (5 responses)

China is committing genocide against Uyghurs, at least according to resolutions in the Parliament of Canada, the Congress of the United States, and the European Parliament.

I don't propose outsiders should determine how China is ruled or who rules China. I do propose that we should not collaborate with a government that is committing genocide.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 22:01 UTC (Thu) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link] (4 responses)

Understood. I was aware of the Uyghur genocide. The question is whether helping with the Loongarch port helps the Chinese government. I honestly don't know that it does. Conversely, does refusing to engage with it on moral grounds hurt the Chinese government, or does it help their propaganda efforts ("Everybody in the West hates us").

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 22:45 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (3 responses)

I think the risk of enabling Chinese propaganda is tiny, seeing as people inside China only ever get to read what the government wants them to anyway. Even if Western nations didn't criticize China, the government could claim they do and nobody inside China would be any the wiser.

I think helping with Loongarch does help the Chinese government because it's trying to reduce its dependence on Western technology, and having a ready-made OS for a homegrown CPU assists with that.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 20, 2023 0:56 UTC (Sun) by KJ7RRV (subscriber, #153595) [Link] (2 responses)

Since many ARM processors are made in China, and the CCP clearly is not concerned with international law or the laws of other nations, what's stopping a hypothetical isolated-from-the-West China from continuing to produce ARM CPUs? They would lose their licenses, but that doesn't take the technical ability away, right?

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 20, 2023 11:59 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> what's stopping a hypothetical isolated-from-the-West China from continuing to produce ARM CPUs?

Absolutely nothing. for an even simpler reason -- ARM China is an independent company from the parent ARM, and was intentionally set up so that it also had both the (irrevocable!) rights and the necessary know-how to develop their own processor cores.

This has already resulted in no small amount of embarrassing shenanigans.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 24, 2023 8:24 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

And, indeed, the only reason Loongson is of interest to China is that it predates ARM China. Had ARM China existed before Loongson, the Chinese government would almost certainly be sticking to ARM chips.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 22, 2023 15:41 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

No one sensible wants a revolution in his country. Revolutions are bloody occurences that happen by accident one thing leading to another and most participants swearing beforehand they want no such thing. Don’t trust the books written postfacto that idealize matters and claim some form of inevitability or public demand. It’s easy to jump on the bandwagon once it’s safely done and past.

Revolutions happen when people are dissatisfied, and realize enough other people are just as dissatisfied, that there is some chance of pulling it through with minimal blood. Before this realization (that may be mistaken) it is quite unsafe to talk about in public or private unless you are an idiot.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 11:03 UTC (Thu) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link] (2 responses)

> This would (I assume) make it problematic for US-based Debian developers to work on this.

No. The US Export Administration Regulations (EAR) do not restrict free software and Loongson has and continues to make contributions to the kernel and GCC and Clang in cooperation with US-based developers. You can call this a flame if you like: it is not nice to spread assumptions about organizations that can be relatively easily verified and which imply extremely negative consequences for those organizations.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 11:18 UTC (Thu) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link] (1 responses)

> do not restrict free software

note: I should have been a bit more specific and said free software available to the public via the internet.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 11:19 UTC (Thu) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418) [Link]

and at no charge. That much I know.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 12:12 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

Loongson the company is on the list, so shipping American software to the company may be a problem. But if someone not affiliated with the company buys a Loongson CPU based computer, and installs software on it, how would that break any restrictions?

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 17, 2023 12:30 UTC (Thu) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] (1 responses)

Loongson is on the US's trade-restriction Entity List.

This is such an old chesnut that even this Australian has the relevant US Export Administration Regulations to hand:

734.3 (b) The following are not subject to the EAR: ... (3) Information and “software” that: (i) Are published, as described in s734.7 ...

734.7 (a) Except as set forth in paragraphs (b) and (c) of this section, unclassified “technology” or “software” is “published,” and is thus not “technology” or “software” subject to the EAR, when it has been made available to the public without restrictions upon its further dissemination such as through any of the following: ... (4) Public dissemination (i.e., unlimited distribution) in any form (e.g., not necessarily in published form), including posting on the Internet on sites available to the public ...

None of the material I elided alters the meaning of these clauses.

Debian adds LoongArch support

Posted Aug 20, 2023 10:14 UTC (Sun) by bosyber (guest, #84963) [Link]

Thanks for doing, and posting that work, takes a lot of speculation away (sorry for those who like to engage in speculation, but on lwn I think it a good thing to reduce such uncertainty).