GNU Guix: Support the growth of the distribution into 2023 and beyond

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) supports the work of several important free software projects through fiscal sponsorship through a program we call the Working Together for Free Software Fund.

Donations to any of the Working Together for Free Software Fund projects directly benefit the work that can be done. Too often, these sorts of projects are underfunded, and developers put in a lot of personal time and effort to keep the project moving forward. With the FSF's fiscal sponsorship, projects can receive donations, apply for funding, and enter into legal contracts, all enabling them to spend more time on their work.

Below is an update from GNU Guix co-maintainer Maxim Cournoyer on the impressive work GNU Guix did in 2022. GNU Guix is a fully free cross-platform package manager and a tool to instantiate and manage Unix-like operating systems. Guix is the default package manager of the GNU Guix System GNU/Linux distribution and is written in GNU Guile.

Hello Guix enthusiasts!

With the release 1.4.0 on the horizon, now is a great time to recap some of the things that have been happening with Guix in the last year, thanks to the hard work of hundreds of volunteers and to your generous support, which has given us the financial means to keep moving forward! In 2022, Guix has:

• turned 10 years old, and it was celebrated in a live conference;
  
• grown its package collection from 15,000 to 20,000+ packages;
  
• improved the robustness and performance of its build farm infrastructure;
  
• gained four new package importers;
  
• gained four new user-facing guix commands;
  
• received new translations;
  
• corrected multiple issues in the installer and elsewhere;
  
• improved its performance when fetching binary substitutes; and
  
• received many other features and improvements, too numerous to list here.
  

A more detailed list of the amassed features and changes in the last year can be consulted in the NEWS file of Guix.

Money kept in the Guix account at the FSF can be, and has been, used to pay for things such as hardware purchases for the build farm, recurring hosting expenses, and fees associated with holding live events. Thank you for your generosity, and see you in #guix on our IRC chat via Libera.Chat or on the mailing lists!

If you want to support the work Guix does, visit the Guix contribution page. We can also accept contributions by wire transfer in USD, euro, and pound sterling -- for that, please write to donate@fsf.org asking for the account details. If you can contribute $500 or more, you'll receive a special public Thank GNU appreciation from the FSF.

The FSF is also currently holding its major fundraiser of the year. 10% of donations for GNU Guix go to the FSF to help sustain the services they provide for us. If you aren't already an FSF associate member, please do consider becoming one to support this and all the other great free software work they do.

Sincerely,

Maxim Cournoyer
Guix Co-Maintainer

Image Copyright © 2015 Luis Felipe López Acevedo. This image is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International license.