On 4/16/07, Koh Choon Lin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
If we do not judge the free-ness of a software by its license, there are scenarios who can go into endless arguments. Here are two of them:
The arguements are only endless when people argue to be right. My definition of Freedom matters ONLY to me, since the software I use matters only to me. You can use non-Free software, Free Software and any mix in between. That's the great thing about freedom. However, the FSF definition IS used to determine if software is distributed by gNewSense. The question of "How do we define Free" has already been answered and it DOES look beyond the license.
1. If a country bans Linux, is it still free (since her citizens cannot copy it) for everyone?
I personally would argue no, it is not Free. I would also urge those people to either repeal their laws or break them.
2. The complete source code of the firmwares in Linux is not available, they exist as a series of numbers. Is it free for everyone?
The complete source code of the kernel Linux is NOT availible, and that's EXACTLY why the gNewSense project, in essence, forked the Linux kernel to remove the non-free components. If you can not reasonably makes changes to it, it's not Free. You can not _reasonably_ make changes to binary firmware so it has been deemed non-Free and removed. It is GPL, and it is non-Free. The same situation exists for the Radeon driver provided by Xorg. It is a Free Software license, but it contain ATI microcode that can not be reasonably modified so it is non-Free and removed.
Regards Koh Choon Lin
_______________________________________________ gNewSense-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnewsense-users
