* [email protected] <[email protected]> [2021-06-26 23:15]: > >> Somewhere, RMS said "And TeX was free - just barely." IIRC, the issue > >> is that you have to change the name of the software to redistribute it, > >> or something.
TeX is free software. LaTeX is free software. > >> Honestly, I will not trust any alleged freedom concerns coming from > >> Parabola and Hyperbola folks. Their policies are extremely strict, > >> more strict than most FSDG distros. Just look at the your-privacy > >> package! They're getting into users' business way too much. This may be viewpoint of poster who selected wrong distribution. To me personally, those distribution are doing me favour, they are selecting exclusively free software lessening my own efforts. I can just say thank you. They are not going into user's business at all. There are various groups of users, there are those which wish to have exclusively free software, some prefer free software over proprietary, and some don't care and some use proprietary. Parabola and Hyperbola are for those who care about freedom. The fact is written everywhere. > >> Probably. I left the FSF-approved ghettos once Python packages > >> were not repackaged under a free repository, but simply REMOVED. > >> Honestly, I'm getting tired of all this. Message to OP. You are in wrong place looking for wrong product. Those are distributions that tend to be fully free, like clean from impurities, like petrol of high quality that cost more than others. Pure natural water is not same as city water. If you prefer city water, drink it. Calling it "ghettos" is not nice. Why you call me as somebody in "ghetto"? You are directing your message to all users of those distributions. And you are in wrong place, this is FSF held Libreplanet, thus free software mailing list. We want free software. It is not mailing list to endorse non-free proprietary programs, it will never be. If you wish to use proprietary software nobody forbids you. Don't expect of FSF endorsed distribution to follow your goals to use whatever proprietary software you wish and want. It is wrong place. > I like your standing. If I would take a stance based on functionality, > I would happily mix: Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and GNU products, > regardless of their licenses. I would not like to take a stance based > on functionality, but on freedom. For me, functionality is needed, but > not at the cost of freedom. Maybe you wanted to say something else, I don't know, it is little contradictory. The US intelligence and world intelligence has recently used the backdoor in proprietary ANOM software that was planted to catch criminals, they got millions of illegal money, caught hundreds of people and drugs. Those are criminals. But nobody speaks about the rights of honest people and their data leaking and abuse. That is not what goes in the public. With proprietary software there is no way to protect privacy, life and ensure safety of honest people. When we know there are backdoors we also know that criminals can have access to backdoors too. I can bet that Telegram is FBI/CIA/NSA-dependent, they are finally US company and cannot avoid the intrusion of spy agencies whatever they may say. Before it was maybe Russian, but would it be Russian would I trust it more? Hahahhaha. No way. Both sides are spying on people. Proprietary software is not just a problem of privacy, there are many issues. Fundamental issue is that user never agreed fully to everything that proprietary software vendor wants to execute. IMHO, free software licenses are not enough. Users should be warned what is software doing on the device before even running it. It should be something similar on what is being displayed on Android like that this software is asking for contact address book, asking for camera permission, location permission, etc. However, such warning information should be given before installation. The outline or description of software should clearly describe major functionality and what it does to users' data. Because I don't authorize neither programmers free software neither programmers of proprietary software to have THEIR freedom how they want on MY computer. Example with Telegram is that by instaling it and running it one authorizes remote vendor's network to inform other people that user has got Telegram account. I have never agree to it. My Fediverse account is not informing my acquaintances that I have Fediverse account. Those are some fundamental issues that are not solved neither in free software world and never in proprietary. That issue is not tackled by Parabola and Guix. If software is free they will include it. I have already mentioned that Guix management anyway does not put attention to comply to GPL. They live in the illusion and are left so because nobody is complaining. But that does not make GPL software compliant to GPL license. Why should they take care if Telegram which is free software is abusing users' privacy? That is not in the FSF guidelines, so they don't care. They are using guidelines for promotion rather than idealistic goal to help users. Free software allows extremes. For example it allows to use free software how user wish and want. Including how programmer wish and want. This includes abuse of privacy. It includes backdoors. One can use free software to create backdoors and spy on other users. One can use key loggers to spy on other users. I am saying that to point out that even if distribution is FSF endorsed it is not necessarily following ethical norms. Endorsement is also not a final proof of anything as if they not comply to GPL licensing that does not make distribution have limited responsibilities just because they are endorsed. > I do not care about a particular document or presentation. What I > really want to do is make sure that I use only free software. Will > avoiding Latex completely be my only option? If that is the > situation, how can I make different types of documents like letters > and papers with tables based on text in Emacs' org-mode? LaTeX is just one good part of TeXLive distribution. You don't need to use LaTeX, you can use for example ConTeXT, other similar set of macros. But there is no Org support that I know. There is Org support for Asciidoctor https://www.asciidoctor.org which I use lately to make many nice PDF presentations with asciidoctor-pdf which is standalone PDF generator. -- Jean Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns In support of Richard M. Stallman https://stallmansupport.org/ _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
