-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 With one exception (below) I can't find where we disagree. I think the commitment to being a free distribution is more important then whether any particular distribution is free right now or not. I could very well be that if Debian met all my points it might still not be considered free by nature of how well integrated contrib and nonfree are. This isn't a problem for free distributions that have never maintained any nonfree software.
Having thought about the threads from yesterday, I discover two points that are at the heart of the matter for me. * The doublethink of some of the people who seemed to me to be speaking to me as representative of Debian. I understand that Debian has a fully functional fully free subset of the system. I admire that Debian developers have gone to the effort required to make it functionally separate. I do not admire the lack of ownership over contrib/nonfree. * It would be very disturbing if FSF took on the aforementioned quality. If FSF conceded Debian's freedom claims, FSF would no longer be trustworthy as a representative of people's freedom. Which brings me full circle to the Ivory Tower problem, where critics of Debian aren't allowed to vocalize their criticism without being criticized in return for "ingratitude" as it were. On the contrary, I do very much appreciate the work that developers have done to enable freedom in the community. But that is given to the community freely. It does not require unnecessary platitudes in return and does it excuse the lying. Having contrib and nonfree repositories is bad, but its not nearly as bad as refusing ownership over it and obfuscating its existence with purely tautological language. Here is where we disagree. On 08/06/2012 01:04 AM, Paul van der Vlis wrote: > I am sure you would like to have a free bios, a free router, free > (cell)phones, a free TV and a free DVD player. Do you have them > allready? In the case not: if you really wanted to be free, you > would have removed all those non-free devices. That isn't intellectually honest. Its an intolerable bit of casuistry that I do not like the stink of. This is why: * None of what I've said, or what anyone has said, has been an attack on the choices of users. GNU+Linux development is not intended to govern what individual people choose to take and use, only provide free choices for cosideration. People who value freedom may try to convince people that freedom is important. We do not tell them what to do. * I do not distribute or promote nonfree software or devices. Technological freedom movements have nothing whatsoever to do with auditing the contents of people's homes. It has everything to do with making it possible for people to convey knowledge to one another in freedom respecting ways. It does have everything to do critically analyzing what developers are distributing to users. Debian is not simply choosing to have nonfree software for personal use, they are publicly distributing nonfree software. I'm not saying they should be stopped if that's what they want to do. I'm saying that no one who says its free should be taken seriously. Its intellectually insulting when something insists that I am confused when I don't. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJQHwwAAAoJEM5s7GXJ0FEI+PkH+gL0FRLmokS10EnIA+8PMEL7 QxzCIofcdWeUjlVnk9/0pOvnLT//TxDWtgKjgIbXeorZQK5Yq+Y1AdxSEd26fn9n X6xs68aRC6fEnTa1Od8ToSjvtgpzF7hA7e/GMVoMs8wgv9klCYPSN8kxx7FNpFMw gwbXSTDinp+hU183v+U71aRd/feNWwRejjKLALUU8aVH8w4+ShRDJWbxtitLzhyf Lr18ScvUIGEjR6+THehiLZPKVN6IiLb7bGCk0W3EcBpH97wHXpX25N6e7eDAWOny Ui7GYvLJDsq1S1WEGxtlxha5H0QAObrRL77QxZQ9yLXMse3dBCP4GDvoVGhIEnw= =ozWo -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Fsf-collab-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/fsf-collab-discuss
