On Sat, 2008-12-20 at 00:14 +0200, Ali Gunduz wrote: > On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 10:34 PM, Ted Smith wrote: > I disagree with him on his general view that freedom oriented > derivatives of popular distributions are useless or that the nonfree > firmware issue is a religious war (i.e. an argument where both sides > are evenly well supported and decisions are ultimately based on > personal tastes). > > However, in the end, his contribution to free software by showing a > bug present in most free distros and a possible flaw in Free Software > Directory's screening process far outweighs his negative comments. > Well, correction: anti-"100% Fully Freee GNU/Linux distro" ranting. It just seemed like he was being _very_ dismissive of the concept. He did expose a bug, but he didn't do it in a "look at this guys, we have work to do, let's get it done" way, he did it in a "hah look at what they haven't caught" way.
> > And this exact lack of clarity by itself disqualifies a program from > being included in a GNU/Linux distribution that is committed to > defending users' freedom. Sure, but this isn't an SGI Free License B-type issue. This is a huge gray area. The resources could probably be better spent investigating other possibly more blatant freedom violations rather than a massive goose hunt that could end up in finding the program free rather than non-free. Pulling the program immediately will only enhance gNS's reputation as a distribution by and for zealots (something which is not true, but that's the FUD we have to deal with). > I wouldn't qualify his blog post as a proper bug report but it is > certainly a positive action. (And he seems to be active in the Fedora > community in fuzzy licensing issues.) I hope he could find time and > motivation to help us identify more packages with questionable > licensing. ...but because he's clearly opposed to the concept of a fully free distribution, I doubt that will happen in any form but snarky blog posts. And are those really helpful?
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