Donations series

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+Title: ElenQ Donations — Intro + GNU Guix
+Date: 2020-05-25
+Categories: Series
+Tags: ElenQ Donations
+Slug: donations-guix-01
+Lang: en
+Summary: Recent ElenQ Technology donation to the great GNU Guix package manager
+    and software distribution
+
+> Read all the posts about [ElenQ Donations here]({tag}donations).
+
+I consider my work part of my responsibility to make this world a better place
+so since the early beginning of the company I decided to donate as much as I
+could to the free software projects I was using for my work in order to help
+the ecosystem be sustainable.
+
+Many times, free software projects that are being extensively used by companies
+are considered just *free* products that don't carry any kind of responsibility
+with them. It is fine to use free software for your own goals (that's the
+freedom 0), but it's not morally acceptable to base your business model on a
+project that independent developers made with no funds (or with very low funds)
+and don't even consider helping them.
+
+We already [had cases][gpg] of free software developers that are keeping the
+projects running with their own expenses while the whole <del>fucking</del>
+world is just *using* the software they make without thinking about their
+conditions.
+
+ElenQ Technology has been founded by a not-very common individual. That's
+obvious.
+
+Sadly, sometimes ElenQ Technology simply can't afford to donate a part of our
+income[^1]. But I can code.
+
+I can always share my time between projects and my free time on trying to
+support free software projects that make <del>my</del> our life easier.
+
+### GNU Guix
+
+[GNU Guix](https://guix.gnu.org) is one of those projects. I started using it a
+couple of months ago as a package manager and now I moved to the full software
+distribution.
+
+For those who don't know Guix yet, it's a package manager and a software
+distribution like Nix and NixOS are. They are based on the same principle and
+have the same core.
+
+The innovation they carry is the transactional package manager that eases
+rollbacks and isolated environment creation. In the case of the software
+distribution, the whole system can be described by an easy-to-write file that
+is also version controlled, so you can always recover an older configuration if
+you need to.
+
+All the packages and system descriptions are defined in code. In Nix, they are
+defined with Nix programming language (a DSL for that purpose). In Guix, they
+use Guile (scheme) programming language (a general-purpose programming
+language).
+
+As my work at ElenQ forces me to visit many different codebases and use a wide
+variety of software in short term projects, Guix is very handy for me. I can
+create a new isolated environment, code on it and, once I'm done, remove it
+from my system in the cleanest way.
+
+Also, package definition is easy and straight to the point, so I can package
+anything I want just coding few lines.
+
+It's an interesting project for system administrators too. Machines are easy to
+replicate with it and it's easy to go back if you screwed up in the
+configuration.
+
+Further than that, they are working really hard on reproducible builds and the
+chain of trust that modern software needs.
+
+You should check the project yourselves better for more detailed info.
+
+### So what?
+
+Since I use the project I'm started to take part on it, packaging new code and
+sending simple patches. More I get involved on it more I will do. I'm not
+really used to Guix yet, so I didn't dig the code deeply enough and I'm not
+able to code very complex stuff on it.
+
+At the moment, I'm trying to package **Meshlab**, a 3D mesh editing software
+you've probably heard about.
+
+For that I packaged (already merged) `openctm`, `lib3ds` and `openkinect` (in
+its three flavors: C/C++ lib, python bindings and open-cv bindings). And during
+that time I also found a couple of details I could improve and I made some
+patches for them too.
+
+In the past I also contributed with few package patches, on `chicken` and
+`chibi` scheme implementations and `kitty` terminal emulator. You can find all
+of them searching my name in the issue board you'll find in the following link:
+
+<https://issues.guix.gnu.org>
+
+GNU Guix is not a very big project and it doesn't have a large userbase that
+can help them grow fast and reliably so it needs some extra help, from me and
+surely from you. They have been a very welcoming community so I encourage you
+to take part if you are interested on it.
+
+I hope this helps to spark your interest on helping on any project you like and
+maybe pressure your company to spend some resources on helping any project they
+use.
+
+
+Stay safe.
+
+[gpg]: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-worlds-email-encryption-software-relies-on-one-guy-who-is-going-broke
+
+[^1]: You can change that [hiring us](mailto:hello@elenq.tech).