Please omit me from the cc list on these messages.
In the case of Ryek's code, the reverse is true but instead of admitting
the mistake and making the needed corrections, FSF has pulled out their
lawyers in hopes of getting away with the theft.
You have jumped to a false conclusion. The FSF is not involved in
this; Linux is not our
The only thing I know about this incident is that OpenBSD developers
are angry at someone I don't know, over events whose details I don't
know.
If they had approached me in a friendly way, asking me to look at the
issue and formulate an opinion, as a favor or for the good of the
community, I
It looks like some people are having a discussion in which they
construct views they would find outrageous, attribute them to me, and
then try to blame me for them.
For such purposes, knowledge of my actual views might be superfluous,
even inconvenient. However, if anyone wants to know what I do
Why don't you ask Theo, whom you once praised, about OpenBSD?
Because he tends to be unfriendly.
Um, OpenBSD is the only common OS that is actively against blobs. See
http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39
We're on the same side here.
That is good. (gNewSense and Ututo are also against blobs.)
Sir, it was brought up that the [GNU/]linux distributions you do suggest do
OpenBSD is by far the most free OS in the landscape. Everything that
ships with it is free or else it won't be distributed with it.
Yes, that's what I was told. I was also told that OpenBSD's ports
system includes non-free programs. Is that accurate too?
There is
not a
Is the list at:
http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions
the list of operating systems that meet your criteria? It appears that
gNewSense includes LAME in binary format, and BLAG recommends it at
https://wiki.blagblagblag.org/Lame in much the same way
I think it would be wrong for me to recommend it to others. Therefore,
if a collection of software contains (or suggests installation of)
some non-free program, I do not recommend it. The systems I recommend
are therefore those that do not contain (or suggest installation of)
As a last question. Will gNewSense become non-free if I start a
ports-like
software install package project for it?
If your install package has ports for non-free software, then it would
promote non-free software.
If it were included in or recommended by gNewSense, then gNewSense
would
So, an operating system can born free (free as in speech, in the GNU
sense)
and then, become non-free just because some users decided to create a way
to ease installations of software that just can't be shipped with the
system?
You've formulated a very broad description, which
Well, it seems that we have the following pattern:
- gNewSense, if someone finds a non-free program in it, that's no disaster
- anything else, if someone finds a non free program in it, that's
surely a disaster
Please, sir, clarify
The words I posted before ought to
Not calling someone unfriendly and just focusing on the
conversation/technical details at hand, would be much more friendly..
even considering friendship wasn't the subject of discussion in the
first place.
Someone else attacked me on this list for not discussing this with
In the end, the only way to prevent users from running non GPL
software
Is there anyone here who actually proposes to prevent users from
running non-GPL-covered software? Not I. I frequently run OpenSSH,
whose license is not the GNU GPL, and is incompatible with the GPL (if
my memory
few mentioned changes. Apples to apples comparisons I say. I adjust
my repositories in a repository browser and poke away. I find java, I
find tools to work with many non-free pieces of software as well.
Could you explain what I adjust my repositories in a repository
browser means,
Where is your line in the sand? When does an operating system become
free by your interpretation? When non-free ports frameworks are
hosted outside the official OpenBSD cvs repository? On a server not
owned by the OpenBSD project?
If they are published by someone else,
Interestingly enough, if you specified that as the reason you recommend
against using OpenBSD, this thread would have been a lot shorter.
Maybe it would have led to a shorter thread, but it would not have
been accurate. My decision not to recommend OpenBSD was not based on
From license.txt in the unrar source archive:
-
The UnRAR sources may be used in any software to handle RAR archives
without limitations free of charge, but cannot be used to re-create the
RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary.
-
UnRAR seems to be a
If a library has a book on [insert-controversial-topic-here], does that
imply endorsement of said topic by the library or by someone who reads the
book? Should the library burn copies of books on such topics to protect
the citizenry? Absolutely not.
A system distribution is
Richard's words are the essence of the Free Software Foundation and
the GNU General Public License: people _must_ use free software,
people _can_ decide whether to use free software or not, but people
_must not_ be free to exercise that desire.
That is not what I said. See
LAME is free software, but distributing it may be dangerous. I do not
criticize those who distribute it. Meanwhile, the FSF support efforts
to reject MP3 format and adopt OGG formats.
his absolutism also causes people to see BSD as a problem, a
social failure.
If some people think that, they did not get it from me. I do not call
BSD either of those things. I say that releasing free software under
a non-copyleft free software license is basically good (i.e., not
However, if distribution D includes this easier way to install in
its ports system, by doing so distribution D endorses it and takes on
the ethical responsibility for it.
Using the same argument I can say that gcc isn't ethical because it allows
compilation of non-free
gNewSense uses the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel facilitates utilization of
non-free blobs.
gNewSense does not include, or refer to, or tell people about
the drivers that use non-free blobs.
Torvalds's decision to put blobs into Linux was a bad one, but
gNewSense is ok because it does
Users have responsability for what they do. We do not take responsability
for them. We give them enough information to make their informed decision.
In my opinion, that's the ethical way to do things.
In my opinion, we ought to take responsibility for the recommendations
and
So, it would seem that (barring human error) the primary philosophical
difference between the packaging systems of OpenBSD and gNewSense is
that gNewSense tries to prevent you from seeing any packages they
consider non-Free, while OpenBSD directly provides only Free software
As far as I understand, the OpenBSD position appears to be that trying
to police users by forbidding them to maintain and retrieve port
metadata about unfree software via this adjunct service (that is not
included in the OS) would be a restriction of the users' freedom.
Obviously
However, it is trivially easy to use the
gNewSense apt system to install unfree software.
Any general-purpose system can run non-free software, but that's not
the issue. The issue is whether a distribution refers people to the
non-free software or not.
Since so many messages have been
Do you believe that The Pirate Bay is guilty of copyright infringement?
That is a legal question, not an ethical question. I do not know what
the law of any given country would say about the Pirate Bay. You
would need to ask a lawyer.
Instead of that legal question, we could ask an ethical
Your definition of free is replete with chains; you would deny the
freedom of choice in the name of freedom.
Freedom means having control of your own life; Freedom of choice is
a partly accurate and partly misleading way to describe that, and
taking that expression too literally leads to
Yes, that's what I was told. I was also told that OpenBSD's ports
system includes non-free programs. Is that accurate too?
Strictly speaking, no. If you unpack ports.tar.gz
you will find a bunch of makefiles, packing lists,
c., all of which are free.
I should
You said Real men don't attack straw men. Yet this is *EXACTLY* what
you are now doing. You continue to repeatedly write that OpenBSD
recommends the ports system to its users, *which it does not*. Let me
say that once again: OpenBSD recommends that EVERYBODY USE PACKAGES,
NOT
It also seems silly to me this idea between tainted and clean
oses, such as Open and gNewSense, respectively. Take for example
a user that runs Ubuntu [GNU/]Linux but proscribes to your free-only
philosophy. They don't have to install the adobe flash plugin
(which I believe
It's total BS. If you don't want to pay for software, fine don't, but
don't go on some religious crusade trying to get me to believe it's
unethical so I won't either.
When you buy a copy of a non-free program, you pay with your money and
with your freedom. You apparently don't assign
An anthology contains the actual licensed material of the books. The ports
tree only contains urls of these pieces of software you object to.
You're right, but I don't think that difference matters for this
issue. Giving just the URLs for non-free software is referring people
to them.
running non-GPL-covered software? Not I. I frequently run OpenSSH,
whose license is not the GNU GPL, and is incompatible with the GPL (if
my memory serves).
Richard,
please stop spreading lies (or looking like a fool) by not doing research.
The license of OpenSSH is
Since both emacs and gcc contain code inside them which permit them to
compile and run on commercial operating systems which are non-free,
you are a slimy hypocrite.
I see you are being your usual friendly self ;-}.
There is a big practical difference between making a free system
If OpenBSD could spin off the ports system (perhaps people could put
it on the Pirate Bay), and break off connection with it, then it would
cease to convey any message from OpenBSD to the users. Then I could
recommend OpenBSD while not recommending its ports system.
Why is it so hard for you to answer that question...
To answer the question was not hard. To answer it before I saw it
would have been very hard.
You failed to answer these several times already,
When you said that, it was 21:00 here. At that time I had not even
seen any of those
However, if distribution D includes this easier way to install in
its ports system, by doing so distribution D endorses it and takes on
the ethical responsibility for it.
We all know that the linux kernel (on which gNewSense is based) has an easy
way to install binary blobs,
So have you sent these types of unrecommendations to other OS'
mailing lists or just OpenBSD's?
I generally don't raise the issue, and I did not raise it this time.
I did not start this discussion. I posted on this list because people
were making inaccurate statements about my views.
In
other words, a society in which non-free software more or less doesn't
exist.
And there you go denying non-free software, by your definition, the
very right to exist. How free is that?
It is much freer than a world in which non-free programs entice many
people into
I should more precisely have said that the OpenBSD ports system
includes instructions for fetching, building and installing specific
non-free programs.
Yes, that would be the truth. What you did say, however,
is not the truth.
What I said was the same thing, in different
If he really hated what we do, he should stop using OpenSSH. He says
he uses it. He should not. We are horrible people; he should not use
our software.
I don't hate what you do. I don't hate OpenBSD. I have a specific
criticism of one point about OpenBSD, but that is not hatred.
This philosophy disturbs me, and reminds me of the rationale for
censorship in dictatorships and police states. Admitting the
existence of something even referencing it does not give it
legitimacy. Should we remove any reference to nazi germany from our
history
You *can't relicense* code under your choice without the author consent
period!
That BSD license gives permission for almost any kind of use,
including distributing the code under other licenses. The only
requirement is not to remove the BSD license statement itself.
Another message
| I don't recommend Torvalds' version of Linux. The versions of Linux
| in Ututo and gNewSense, which I recommend, do not have the blobs.
Interesting, these linux distributions.
They are GNU/Linux distributions. (See
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html.)
And for all those people who keep trying to say that OpenBSD doesn't
support ports - we do. If we put it out, that's the support already.
But - seriously, as a project, do we need the validation from
FSF/Richard?
OpenBSD certainly doesn't need my permission for anything.
If
OpenBSD refuses to accept it's users being forced into depending on
vendor binaries and pushes people to send a message that open support
for hardware matters.
I appreciate those actions. They help our community.
How does using non-free software, by your definition anything none
GPL'ed I gather, bring actual physical harm to anyone anywhere?
Physical harm is not the only kind of harm.
Losing your freedom is harm too. Social practices that lead
people into a life without freedom are harmful.
Richard, you can try to weasel your way all you can, saying you're `not
aware' of such and such. In the end, if you want to be true to your goals,
you should say you do not recommend ANYTHING. Heck, you should say to people
that they should not use computers at all, for obvious
RMS' statement that OpenBSD endorses non-free software goes too far,
What I said is that the ports system contains recipes for installing
non-free software. In another message in this batch I address the
question of what words to use to refer to that relationship. For me,
the issue is that
For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I
also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I
send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me.
It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.
The Adobe flash plug-in is non-free software, and people should not
install it, or suggest installing it, or even tell people it exists.
so much for free speech.
Free speech means you are free to tell people about the Adobe flash
plug-in, and also free to decide not to tell them.
I doubt someone who is truly unfriendly could organize a hackathon, a
friendly social event.
He may be perfectly friendly to others. What is relevant is that he
tends to be unfriendly to me.
The same argument could be made about your unfriendliness. We could not
talk to you
Come oh dilbert of gnu, stamp your licence upon all who code. Propegate your
gnu legacy through the universe down to the plank scale. Install your agenda
near and far. Come and spread the evangalistic word.
All I can do personally is bless your computer. But if it has
non-free
Torvalds' version of Linux is not free software, for this reason.
Ututo and gNewSense include a version of Linux which remove the
firmware blobs, in order to make it free software.
that's awesome, can users add these back in if they choose?
I suppose so. I don't see
This incredibly misguided. People won't switch to free software
because of hectoring and hamfisted attempts to frustrate their
choices,
Convincing people to switch to free software is just one part of what
we need to do to establish a society in which users are free. We also
have to
Please note that I'm not saying gcc or emacs should not support
windows, solaris, ultrix or any other non-free operating system. I do
not hold these extreme ethical views. I merely question RMS's ethics.
Is there anyone here that actually believes it is wrong for free
programs to have
Again, Richard made foul and faulty comments about OpenBSD first.
Neither one.
What I said was that I don't recommend OpenBSD because the ports
system suggests non-free programs. That's neither faulty nor foul.
It is factually accurate: the ports system does contain recipes to
install
| As has been said before, the ports tree is just a
| scaffold, used to force third party programs (be they free or non-free
| and for whatever value of freedom you wish) to install into a sane and
| known location within the filesystem, easing the task of installing
|
He claims OpenBSD suggest the use of non-free software. After having
used it for quite some time, such a suggestion was never made to me.
I will not argue with your statement about your personal experience.
The point is that OpenBSD distributes the ports system, and the ports
system
There is a difference between I have no obligation to answer each and
every message and I cannot find a coherent answer to several messages.
One difference is that the first one is true, and the second one is
false. As you've seen by now, people were looking for something
sinister in a
Well, no, you may. The problem is when two people sling poop on each other,
sooner or later it ends, and then all you've got is two guys standing
there looking
sheepish, all covered with poop.
I have carefully avoided personal attacks in this discussion. I have
not attacked
Although I'm sure it's convenient for most of the world to think that
free software and open source originated solely in the Linux and GNU
projects...
They won't get that idea from me. I tell people regularly in my
speeches that I found a free software operating system in use at MIT
No No NO. You miss the point. GNU is fighting for their view
of freedom. Not *real* freedom.
The GNU Project campaigns to give software users these four essential
freedoms:
Freedom 0: the freedom to run the program as you wish.
Freedom 1: the freedom to study the source code and change
2) If supporting non-free software is bad,
What I object to is referring people to non-free software as something
to install. Supporting is a broader term, and includes various
different practices. I don't object to all of them.
I just finished listening to the BSDTalk interview for
Requirement 2: the requirement to distribute exact copies to others
Requirement 3: the requirement to distribute copies of your modified
versions
to others.
Fixed that for you.
The GNU GPL does not require you to distribute copies to anyone,
neither exact copies nor
As your views on open-source have become more and more extreme over
time, you have become less and less relevant to a overall practical
open-source community
I've never agreed with open source at all; my community is the free
software community. In 1998 part of the community
Thanks. Since you didn't answer soon, and since I did get other info
about non-free software needed for OpenSolaris, I already asked for a
correction in the interview. I made it general so that I won't have
to go into these specifics. But I would like to know more about the
need for Devpro:
I'm curious how you can recomend an OS, like gNewSense that only runs on
non-free hardware, that
has required non-free software to be used in it's creation?
How do you do these things? Perhaps I do them the same way.
The term non-free hardware is misleading, because the issues that
Here is the real issue, Richard. You go off and endorse OpenSolaris
without knowing the facts. You get confronted with them and you change
history. Sound familiar?
What sounds familiar is the nasty spin you place on a minor confusion.
But you have added a new false accusation of
Richard, you are too stupid to go and learn FACTS before you open
your big fat lying mouth.
I am sure the readers can judge for themselves whether I am stupid.
They will certainly see I am not perfect. I had learned the facts
about OpenSolaris, but that was months before. By the time I
I don't, however, I don't claim to live by the same free vs non-free
rules, I use what works for me.
I think you have misinterpreted the principles that I believe in and
live by. I hope my explanations will help.
The free software foundation shall not be called free software
foundation.. it shall be called Stallmanist Foundation and the
philosophies are to be outlined as Stallmanism.. not free software.
If you want to campaign for a philosophical stand about software and
trees, you are
As for Intels use of non-ree software, I am sorry for them, and I hope
that someday they will be able to move to free software.
Yet you still support them, and require gNewsense users to use Intel/AMD
hardware?
I do not boycott companies for using non-free software.
In fact many of the people did expect this when you favorite
organization lost the battle publically on Reyk's code that your
friends stole and tried to impose your license on it, and when they
even tried vainly to go legal by the advice of a un-educated american
lawyer but
As for Intels use of non-free software, I am sorry for them, and I hope
that someday they will be able to move to free software.
Is this hope reasonable or logical?
Totally not. Intel just wants the best software they can afford to get
their
chips as fast and as good as
This is the same with your recommended system GNU/Darwin:
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/index.php?page=ports
Who also contains instructions to install the such port system.
Thank you for telling me about this problem. I will talk with them
about this ASAP. I expect they will probably
In addition, I thought that OpenSolaris was just a kernel, but it
looks like the question had in mind a whole system. This
miscommunication has the effect of making my statement appear to be an
endorsement of a system.
Huh? OpenSolaris is just a kernel
That's what I
The wget he uses is worse.
You can download any non-free software with it and it does not warn
the user at all!!!
I don't object to general-purpose tools just for being general.
I was a bit curious about what would someone who reads web-sites by
using a wget daemon through e-mails whose own web-site looks like...
well...
Apache httpd 2.0.54 ((Debian GNU/Linux) DAV/2 SVN/1.2.0 PHP/4.3.10-22
mod_ssl/2.0.54 OpenSSL/0.9.7e)
I use wget for personal
But I think the FPGAs in products are more like the possible computer
in my microwave oven: nobody installs software in them, so they might
as well be circuits.
Really? All those wifi/raid/cpu/etc cards/chips out there that need
firmware, you think they're not a mix of
Before you argue that ReactOS is merely a free implementation of Win32
API, let me clarify: if the purpose of ReactOS isn't to run some
Windows-only software S, then what is the purpose of ReactOS? if S was
free, it wouldn't be Windows-only as it would have ported to free
OS's.
If something is harder to copy, it is ethically ok to have a different
standard for this piece of technology.
Seriously, that's what you're saying above. Because hardware may have
to be copied by hand, you consider them ethically not the same.
Yes, that's my position, for 20
My favorite organization, the FSF, was not involved. If
any of my friends were involved, they did not inform me.
Good friends you have then.
More likely they aren't my friends. You may have noticed that the
Linux developers disagree with my philosophy. I know very few of
http://directory.fsf.org/project/Windows32API/
http://directory.fsf.org/project/wxwindows/
http://wxwindows.org/about/credits.htm
see the acknowledgment from one of the softwares endorsed by FSF your
favourite organization.
Thank you for telling me about this problem. I will talk with them
about this ASAP. I expect they will probably remove those.
And ReactOS is next?
Does ReactOS recommend non-free software?
If so. please show me what it says, and the URL.
I do not have a lot of influence with
You certainly don't live by what you preach. You are pointed at not one but
various facts to the contrary.
I do practice my own principles, but when you compare the two
you have to be careful not to alter the principles in your own mind.
If you do that, you could easily discover an
from the data I get from below
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.gnewsense.org
I just wonder if the gnewsense OS is being distributed through the
very non free OSes
http://www.gnewsense.org/FAQ/FAQ#toc3
The words being distributed through are not
I guess I missed the part where you explained how it makes sense to
apply a label like not recommended because it supports non-free
software to OpenBSD but not to FSF (emacs, etc.).
As I've said, I think it's acceptable for free applications to run on
non-free platforms (and say that
I note that Richard also says that AROS is a free operating system.
I don't recognize the name AROS, but if it is an operating system, it
is possible I said something about it at some point. Could you tell
me where that statement appears? If I need to correct it, I need to
know where it is.
BUT I WILL STILL GO ON SPREADING THE LIE THAT OpenBSD CONTAINS
NON-FREE SOFTWARE SO PEOPLE ARE MISLEAD
I never intentionally said such a thing. It was a misunderstanding,
because I chose words that were subject to misinterpretation.
I appreciate having been informed about the
From the look of Stallman's message, it seems as if he thinks copying
software is totally free, which in reality it costs a bit more than
just plain free.
That's often true. (And even if it doesn't cost you money, it may
take some of your time.) But I don't think that changes the
Developing a program ( real software ) for a non-free platform is big
encouragement by loud communication ( actions speak better than words
) to use or continue using that non-free platform.
There are two issues here: the practical effects, and the message conveyed.
The practical
ReactOS is a free software operative system with a support database
that indicates which programs it can run.
If I understand you weird meaninig of promotion, then you'll find this
a bad thing too, right?
Yes. Thank you for showing me those specific problems.
I will discuss them
What is an operating system? An OS could be considered an application,
You could consider an OS an application, and you could consider
hardware software, just as you could consider the Earth a pumpkin. My
response is that you're starting from assumptions I find questionable,
so I don't
Dude... it is on the endorsement list on gnu.org you talked about in
the beginning how you cannot include OpenBSD in it...
http://gnu.org/links/links.html
Thank you. Now I know where to remove the link if it comes to that.
I have a feeling that list is maintained by your 'FSF
As I've said, I think it's acceptable for free applications to run on
non-free platforms (and say that they do), because this doesn't
recommend the installation of those non-free platforms. But free
systems should not recommend, suggest, or offer to install non-free
apps.
I don't think OpenBSD users understand what you mean by recommend
non-free software,
I explained it earlier in this thread.
so if you could, please, give an example by
showing where OpenBSD (web-site?) says that it recommend non-free
software and the URL.
1 - 100 of 134 matches
Mail list logo
