While we are bragging, stagex was the first to hit 100% full source bootstrapped deterministic and hermetic builds last year and the first to make multiple signed reproductions by different maintainers on their own hardware mandatory for every release.
Debian has come along way, but when Debian says reproducible they mean they grab third party binaries to build theirs. When we say reproducible we mean 100% bootstrapped from source code all the way through the entire software supply chain.
Guix did a full source bootstrap first, credit where well due, but it does not apply to their whole tree. E.g haskell is bootstrapped with a binary, qemu includes binary firmware blobs, etc.
Guix is not fully bootstrapped or reproducible.
To your point though, the incomplete efforts of many other distros absolutely accelerated us.
Unfortunately, the term “reproducible” can be interpreted in many ways because there is no strict and complete definition. People and projects bend it to their liking.
Debian has come along way, but when Debian says reproducible they mean they grab third party binaries to build theirs. When we say reproducible we mean 100% bootstrapped from source code all the way through the entire software supply chain.
We think that distinction matters.
https://stagex.tools