* Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <gnu...@cyberdimension.org> [2021-10-05 18:08]: > So given how imperfect is human communication, it's logical to expect > that some issues will arise, and the question would rather be how to > fix it so everything worth smoothly.
It would be beneficial that freedom issues are tracked centrally from the FSDG website or group of pages and then that issues are distributed to distributions. This way distributions could coordinate better. Some issues should be FSDG related and considered very important, while other could be on sole discretion of distribution managers, such as inclusion of vendor lock-in software such as Telegram; as opinions vary between distribution managers. > For projects like Guix for instance, it could probably be improved by > making sure that new contributors, especially people that never heard > of the FSDG before, do not miss that information. That is what I mean when I said that distribution have various purposes, some are philosophically oriented towards free software, some are by interest, some are oriented by popularity and other usages, or simply gain from FSF recognition (not necessarily directly contribute to free software philosophy). > There is not only that to consider but also how strategic are the FSDG: > if we want free software to scale, things must be as simple as possible > for users. And if we have too much norms, it would prevent that. Coordinating distributions would useful. Especially it would be useful for FSF/GNU to maintain parsable list of software packages that are well known to be free, categorized, that distributions can automate and ease the creation of new distribution. This could include the freedom problematic packages and notices. > In general we need to find ways to work more together to improve the > situation, but we also need to make sure that norms like the FSDG and > the RYF certification work well. When I mentioned purposes, that I consider very important. You may maybe see how Linux as kernel pushed the purpose of being opportunistic and included various non-free blobs over the years, many people were thinking that it is free software while it was not. What a global deception! The purpose to be opportunistic and consider software rather gratis, instead of free deviated so many Linux kernel based distributions from being truly free to being rather opportunistic distributions, such as Arch Linux. To clarify what I mean with "opportunistic", straight from Wordnet dictionary: * Overview of adj opportunistic The adj opportunistic has 1 sense (first 1 from tagged texts) 1. (1) opportunist, opportunistic, timeserving -- (taking immediate advantage, often unethically, of any circumstance of possible benefit) Debian has nicely defined purposes, but still leans to opportunistic approach and includes non-free, pays for distribution of non-free software. -- Jean Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns In support of Richard M. Stallman https://stallmansupport.org/
