Guy Johnston wrote: > > I've also changed the bit about non-free repositories.
I don't know exactly what you changed, but I'd like to comment on what you wrote. That said, my reply may not be relevant to what you did. My apologies if that's the case. > Before, it gave the impression that it's not possible to use any > non-free respositories with gNewSense, even if you want to. That > fuels the criticism that some people have of gNewSense, that we're > "taking away people's freedom" somehow. This is the equivalent to the question "I want to be a slave, it is my freedom to choose so". Can you be a slave in the trivial meaning of the word in a modern society? Would it be allowed by the society to be whipped and treated like a slave even if it's your choice? I think that such a social status is prohibited because it's anti-human and antisocial. I don't think that gNewSense, as a distribution, must make extra effort not to be possible to install non-free software. But it should not make extra effort not to BREAK the users' systems that have non-free software installed. That's what most of the other GNU/Linux distros do -- they refrain from changes that might badly affect non-free software users or take care to add "Conflicts:" (or the equivalent of it) to reduce the harm these users could suffer. This is unacceptable for an ethical free software distribution. Currently, both points are moot, as there are no official gNewSense packages being developed. > Obviously that's unfounded, What is unfounded is the fundamental approach to the question. We should strive to defeat the widely-spread sickness rather than providing a short-term "vaccine" that doesn't cure anything, just makes us look more acceptable. _______________________________________________ gNewSense-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnewsense-users
