>> by providing collection of such software on a single disc, plus >> providing video (such as the Revolution O.S. trailer, in WebM >> format) and open-source books (The cathedral and the bazaar and others).
>How does any of this promote free software? It promotes a bunch of >programs, films and books -- but how does any of this teach the user >that they need to value their freedom? Books such as "The cathedral and the bazaar" promote community-driven development, which is beneficial to Open-Source and to Free Software communities. Video, such as "Revolution OS" also speaks about Free Software philosophy quite much. Making it in WebM format makes that statement even more bold. Why didn't I made a Linux bootable CD/USB ? Because Qumble is much less intrusive to Windows' users workflow. They can keep playing Windows games, and use Windows-only software (IE/Photoshop/MS-Office) and try this software same time, side by side. It gives much smoother learning curve for Windows users, vs. the bumpy road of a full distro or mini-distro. However, I do put a VirtualBox virtualizer, so our users could try out a full GNU/Linux based system. (but I gave no links for actual downloads of images...) Why didn't I named it "Free Software" ? I could put a GNU logo (that GNU cow)... but it has implications, like from any brand: Users will start asking for Debian-like freedom or higher standard, which I cannot provide. Specifically, some minor parts of Qumble are not 100% Free Software. 1. Audacity binary ships with unlicensed MP3 decoder. (but encoder is Ogg Vorbis) 2. VirtualBox binary requires MS compiler to build (Driver Development Kit; DDK), but not to run. 3. Qumble disc browser (under LGPL) itself written in Visual Basic, and so it requires a MS compiler. 4. 7-zip ships with the non-free *.rar decoder. (Debian, obviously, cut this "unrar" part away...) 5. Because I take pre-build binaries, and ship together with upstream sources, but I don't build the apps myself, there is no 100% guarantee that all parts of my distro are build-able. Now attempting to fix any of those is beyond my current capabilities. I mostly ship whatever Windows binaries upstream provide, with some exceptions, where I build custom setup. (like for TuxRacer). Now, smoothing corners is allowed in the Open-Source movement, but is a no-no in pure Free Software movement. Maybe 2 and 3 is 'OK' provided, that this project is done under Windows environment. Debian for example requires all the compilers to be also Free Software for all of it's packages, but I think in this case this requirement needs to be relaxed. Anyway, the Qumble also intends to broaden the Free Software ecosystem (Firefox lessens IE power, LibreOffice lessens MS-Office format lock-in, and so on...). Success of Qumble means reduced dependency on proprietary vendor lock-in. -- -Alexey Eromenko "Technologov"
