Just to clarify,..
Timothy Musson wrote re:
So the argument is, we should:
a) not buy gear with these components, & 'consumer strike' for
freedom
b) not support distros not encouraging a)
That's not what I was getting at.
But it's not far off what I want to discuss over on the GNUz list.
(I have homework to catch up on first. But like I said, I'll start a new
thread over there :^)
No worries. I hope we haven't spun the issue out beyond tolerance.
Rik, you wrote that "Mepis is Kubuntu with the freedom (lesson) stripped
out. Consumer orientated".
Now, I don't know anything about Mepis - I haven't looked at it. But I
do know that Ubuntu includes non-Free parts (most distros do, including
Debian and, I assume, Mepis). Ubuntu is absolutely not interested in
being a Free Software distro: it's interested in being popular.
I disagree. Ubuntu's pressing most of the right buttons. Like Nick said,
there's nothing non-Free in there by default (I am convinced), and one
has to consciously _choose_ any non-Free blobs etc. So it's useful as
well as being Free at kick-off ;-) I have gotten in the ATI fglrx
package and the free Linuxant driver for my modem - I should post the
license of the latter: a condition of use is that you don't
reverse-engineer it, but I haven't spotted any code to help me with that
yet!
What Mepis has done, recently shifting to an Ubuntu base for newer
kernel & updates, is to make it easy for beginner installers by
including the binary blob drivers by default - I am led to believe.
But if you want to recommend an Operating System from a Free Software
standpoint rather than a "consumer oriented" standpoint: gNewSense and a
few others actually do make an effort to strip out non-Free parts.
That is all I was trying to say.
Fair enough too.
--
Rik
