Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Ubuntu !free

[Noah Slater]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 10:38:49AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> Please, if it's an essential part of Emacs, dual-license it under the
> GPL so that it can always be included with Emacs in any distribution.

Licencing of manuals is controlled by the FSF where the copyright assignment has
taken place, so petitioning individual developers is a useless exercise.

> As far as I can recall, FSF still doesn't distribute a complete
> operating system itself

To the best of my understanding GNU is a complete operating system.

> so it's easy for it to throw stones at the glass houses of debian and others
> about the Linux kernel firmwares.

This is a misrepresentation of the facts. The FSF is not throwing stones, it is
taking an understandable public position on an organisation that distributes
non-free software.

You're implying that because the FSF does not distribute a free operating
systems (which it does) it has no position holding firm on it's ethics, which
seems a little absurd to me.

Would you have them recommend any and all GNU/Linux distributions, only to be
rightly pulled up for the conflicting messages this would send?

> It is a serious bug for any part of the debian operating system (=the
> main repository on the FTP archive and the only bit on the official
> CDs and DVDs) to Recommend anything from non-free.

You're conflating debian/control syntax with the actual meaning of the word.

I would consider this example to be a recommendation of non-free software:

  http://packages.debian.org/etch/rar

Waving your hands and saying that Debian "simply" has some packages "somewhere"
on an FTP mirror but they are somehow "not official" is an absurd thing to do.

> Debian no more recommends non-free software than FSF does when it mentions
> that such-and-such is available for Microsoft Windows.

The FSF do not host, advertise and provide extensive resources for searching,
downloading, installing and using non-free software. Debian does.

> I thought FSF's complaint was that the debian project (not the OS) hosts some
> non-free software packages on its archive network

Again, this is a misrepresentation. The contrib and non-free packages permeate
every level of the Debian universe, from the public website, to the system tools
to the FTP archives you keep mentioning.

> most of the GNU project's mirror network hosts non-free software packages too

... and I am willing to bet that the mirrors, which are presumably provided
gratis, have absolutely no affiliation with the GNU project.

It really feels like you're clutching at straws here. Perhaps we should start to
consider if the ISP's routers used to service the FSF's Boston offices are run
on non-free software or not, and if so, well Debian must be okay to distribute
non-free software because these things are clearly the same.

> It comes down to who do you trust

It's not really about trust, but I'll get to that in a second.

> FSF with their history of good philosophy and poor recommendations

Care to provide any examples?

> the debian project with its admitted bugs but free software goal

Your entire email could have been shortened to this one sentence, it's the only
one that doesn't try to twist the facts, and the only one I agree with.

I am an enthusiastic Debian user, passionate Debian advocate and committed
Debian contributer (who's just entered NM FWIW) and I feel absolutely no
conflict in simultaneously being an FSF associate member.

The FSF does not recommend any organisation that distributes non-free software
and this is an understandable public position to take.

Debian aims to be a Free Software operating system and it has one of the
strongest commitments to freedom of all the UNIX-like operating systems.

This two things are not in conflict. There is no reason to feel like you have to
defend Debian "against" the FSF. No one is attacking. Free Software is not a
religion, it doesn't have any commandments to follow, there is no Proprietary
Purgatory you can be banished to and the FSF has not issued any fatwās.

The tendency for people in the FLOSS community to polarise issues into "good"
and "evil" or "freedom lover" or "freedom hater" is absurd and very unhealthy.

Debian is a great OS, a supporter of freedom and not officially recommended.

So what?

Best,

-- 
Noah Slater - Bytesexual <http://bytesexual.org/>