2007/5/29, Vihan Pandey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
To paraphrase what GNU has said : We must not judge all of a person by just part of what they do.
I thought he was the founder (and main funder) of Ubuntu and Canonical.
Mark Shuttleworth has AFAIK - NEVER done anything to harm/hurt Free Software. The only thing one can do is continue requesting Canonical to release launchpad as Free Software and if they are not doing it for some reason to kindly state that.
I, for one, don't use Ubuntu anymore, don't recommend it any more until they fix these issues http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/User:Pravs/What_Ubuntu_should_do_to_regain_my_confidence So for me gNewSense, Debian, Fedora ... are much more important than Ubuntu (but again it is better than Windows, Suse ...). Freedom aspect is not the top priority for Ubuntu (Ubuntu website highlights Free of Cost availability).
By the way - has anyone done this so far?
I didn't get it. Did you mean anyone released their distro infrastructure? Debian uses only Free Software for its infrastructure and it promises to give back to the community any new tools created. "When we write new components of the Debian system, we will license them in a manner consistent with the Debian Free Software Guidelines." http://www.us.debian.org/social_contract
If you have anything else besides the use of launchpad to incriminate him with please post the same.
see the wiki link. It is not just launchpad, the entire data stored in the infrastructure is in proprietary format (Remember the case of bitkeeper). And Ubuntu does not give credit to the GNU project. "Calling this variant of the GNU system "Linux" plays into the hands of people who choose their software based only on technical advantage, not caring whether it respects their freedom. There are people like Barr, that want their software "free from ideology" and criticize anyone that says freedom matters. There are people like Torvalds that will pressure our community into use of a non-free program, and challenge anyone who complains to provide a (technically) better program immediately or shut up. There are people who say that technical decisions should not be "politicized" by consideration of their social consequences." http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/linux-gnu-freedom.html So for me Ubuntu is down the list of Free Software distributions and I would support all distributions that gives Freedom more importance than ease of use/technical merit. You will have to use a non-free program to participate in ubuntu development and your contributions will be stored in a proprietary format, you could retrieve it only through that program (remember bitkeeper). Again I have no personal hatred against Mark Shuttleworth. He has done a wonderful job in getting GNU/Linux to masses and he is a great speaker and amazingly good at convincing people. But that doesn't mean I have to agree to everything he does. Cheers Praveen -- പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില് Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign
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