This was only a small part of the interview. Unfortunately the choice of
words in the beginning was poor, but it wouldn't have been so bad had they
actually kept the part where I went into what free software was and how Linux
Mint, Ubuntu, etc were not totally free.
I was very conscious of my initial wording, but on the spot interviews can be
challenging. Particularly when your trying to communicate both freedom and
compatibility at the same time.
Essentially the reason I included Linux Mint was I wanted to make clear we're
not solely compatible with 100% free software distributions and that you
don't have to use a 100% free distribution to gain some of the advantages of
100% free software friendly hardware.
What we don't want is people buying hardware dependent on non-free
components. That would just increase the amount of non-free software actively
being used as well as make it more difficult to more away from distributions
with lots of non-free software.
In any event I think it could have been much worse. Overall I think it came
out better than I expected. It also probably didn't help that System76
sponsors the show (or did). I think I made a distinction between us,
System76, Dell, and other companies in the space. That might have been why
they cut out the rest of the interview.
