Where in the Repos are you seeing folding@home?

Also in this care some restrictions make sense:

• People mucking with the data would result in usless results for the project.
• People muching with the software could result in useless data for the project

As a side note: You should never be installing/running software on a computer that you do not have permission to do so.

Sorry, I wasn't sure what the situation with it was.

I can see them at:

https://www.parabola.nu/packages/community/i686/foldingathome/
https://www.parabola.nu/packages/community/armv7h/foldingathome/

I would note that I pulled the PKGBUILD using the 'asp foldingathome' and was able build it, which it did without any further input, the armv7h package installs with the usual - sudo pacman -S foldingathome but doesn't work (it installing without, but not running without issue/warning is what lead me to pull the PKBUILD and build for x86_64 and installing it.

Thanks
ryry

It should be noted that asp pulls from the Arch repos not asp pulls directly from the Arch or Alarm or Arch32 repos and not the parabola repos.

But as pacman -Ss shows it on i686 and ARM it'll have to be blacklisted there. It does not show up on x86_64 at this time but blacklisting will prevent that anyways.

Thanks for noticing it.. But Be careful using ASP to pull packages because if you ASP'd a package listed in [libre] you'd actually end up pulling the PKGBUILD from Arch not from abslibre.

Thats ok, it was my first spot in many years using parabola :), I didn't realise till installed and some seeing some chatter on the trisquel forums regarding it. Thanks for the advice, I wasn't aware that pulling the PKGBUILD for asp came directly from arch, I am glad I know now (though I build few myself).

Do you think there is any real risk (i.e compromise) from having had installed it and run it fairly briefly (now removed) on my system that I should be worried about?

Thanks
ryry

I don't thing you have anything to worry about. F2H has been around forever and are very well respected.

The only issue would be one of freedom. and if you've removed it that is no longer an issue.

The wording in the paragraphs you listed are mainly leagleese to cover their buts if someone melts the bosses cpu by running F@H with bad settings.

I ran F@H years ago for years on what would now be 15-20yo hardware and nothing ever broke.

I'd be hesitant to blacklist folding@home, this would, especially in the current situation, do potentially more harm than good.

as bill-auger said, it's a mature, well-respected project from the scientific community.

IMHO it doesn't matter how well respected the software is when it's nonfree. Many of the packages Parabola blacklists are well respected too, so what? For example, boinc is blacklisted, and it allows to participate in similar scientific projects like Rosetta@Home that's also nonfree.

And it's not clear to me how one can even verify that the computing resources are actually spent on scientific research and not on other things like cryptocurrency mining, for example.

After all, blacklisting doesn't prevent any user from running F@H or any other nonfree software on Parabola system. The user is responsible for finding a way to install it from other sources, not from Parabola repos.

just to be pedantic, i would suggest blacklisting the package if it does not meet the FSDG - its not like that would prevent anyone from using the program - presumably, the program can be acquired on the upstream website as a self-contained binary package - if the program is only distributed as a blob, then there is little benefit of wrapping it in a distro package - the distro package most likely contains the very same blob that can be downloaded from the upstream

it would be better to give people instructions for how the program (or any non-free software) could and should be run in a VM - although it also would be against the FSDG to recommend that, it would be better than physically distributing the program

'm with bill-auger and grizzlyuser on this one. It is non-free, ergo it must be blacklisted. The facts that it is a great project, doing good work for the betterment of humanity is a separate issue. I love F2H I folded over 1000 units back in the day. None of that makes it free software.

I completely understand why it can't be free. That doesn't change the fact that it is not.

ok 30 days of deliberation have passed - i did not even read that copyright notice until now - it is very clear about prohibiting re-distribution in any form - pacman is definitely a "3rd party installer" from the publisher's perspective; so the FSDG need not be evoked in this case - unless arch has the required written permission, even they should not be distributing this program - even if arch has permission, all mirror operators are actually 4th-parties, and arch's permission probably would not extend to the entire network of mirrors - who shall be the dirty dog that does the deed?