Re: software distribution criteria -- The OpenBSD case

[MJ Ray]

John Darrington <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 10:21:49AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
>      - gNewSense will include non-free-software material that Debian won't
>      (FDL-with-invariants and some badgeware), so Debian is freer by design
>      in that way,
>
> First of all are you sure of your facts?  So far as I'm aware, there
> are no FDL-with-invariants manuals currently in gNewSense.

http://archive.gnewsense.org/gnewsense/pool/main/g/gdb/gdb_6.4-1ubuntu5.1.diff.gz

  "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
  document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
  Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software
  Foundation; with the Invariant Sections being "Free Software" and
  "Free Software Needs Free Documentation" [...]"

It took me all of two minutes to find that.  Did you check your facts
before posting?

> [...] I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "badgeware".

Things like AGPL.  Sorry, but I'm not as familiar with which packages
to check for that.

>      - Debian is producing a GNU/Hurd version that gNewSense doesn't, so
>      Debian is freer by design in that way,
>
> I don't think that GNS has been designed NOT to include a Hurd
> version, it's just that that hasn't been a proirity to them.

GNS has been designed as a derivative of Ubuntu, which doesn't have a
Hurd version AFAIK, so the only way for GNS to include a Hurd version
is to change its design.

>      - gNewSense pretends the non-free archives it can use (including
>      restricted / Multiverse) do not exist, even though it is easy to find
>      out how to use them, [...]
> 
> You're being silly here.  Refusing to advertise a product is not
> "pretending that it doesn't exist".  

gNewSense doesn't refuse to advertise Multiverse.  That's why it is
easy to find out how to use them.  Unless something has changed, a
simple question in any of the project discussion channels will get the
instructions.  By "pretending that it doesn't exist" I mean not
mentioning the existance on the project web site.  That's being silly.

> I think it's entirely appropriate that a Free software project avoids
> giving publicity to non-free software.  Doing otherwise is
> incompatible with its very objective.

Not if that publicity is designed to publicise the non-free nature of
it.  Notice that the FSF and sometimes GNU announces and explains why
software is non-free-software, like in the "Java trap".

Hope that explains,
-- 
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