At a glance the problem seems to be trademarks and binary-only (Hence
non-free) packages. Trisquel replaces Ubuntu branding with its own (though
there may be some non-rebranded packages left, see the bug tracker), so
that's not a problem. Also, Trisquel includes only free software, which
implies that it distributes only software that anyone[1] has the right to
distribute. For programs for which this isn't the case, they're simply not
distributed in Trisquel.
The web pages you linked are written from the open source perspective, which
isn't the same as the free software philosophy. It fails to acknowledge the
ethical problem and hence it's ethically inferior to the free software
philosophy. Note that most but not all open source software is also free
software.
While these open source supporters worry that Cannonical will begin enforcing
their proprietary licenses (That is it, they worry about having to pay
money); free software supporters generally *act* on the problem by outright
avoiding proprietary software, so that no company can come to them and
threaten the right to distribute the software they use, including Cannonical.
Open source supporters generally have the attitude that the more popular
system, the better. They generally don't care about the ethics of software
and they're glad when somebody builds a GNU/Linux distribution with the mere
goal of distributing software which will serve the user only superficially
but in truth it's entirely made for the developer's benefit (Software that is
proprietary, has digital restrictions management, etc...) such as
“SteamOS”. I think that that's an absurd viewpoint, but that's the
viewpoint of the author of the first web page you linked, as he clearly
states near the end of the post.
Software must server its user, and nobody should be able to do business
developing or distributing software or a physical product that doesn't
primarily serve the user, but the lack of ethics of some people combined with
the indolence of the rest (And not capitalism or companies, in my opinion)
has put the society in the situation where that's commonplace. Games which
the user is prevented from distributing or changing, under legal threat,
means that he is subject to the developer's whim, as he can't adapt the game
to his taste, fix errors, or rely on the community to do it. Since not even
the most productive programmer does more than all the other developers of the
software he uses combined, relying on the community improvement is as
important for programmers as for non-programmers.
[1]: For some Copyleft licenses like the GNU GPL, users who violate the
license may lose the right to use the software. This is intended as a mean of
deterrent to people who would like to abuse free software to make proprietary
software derived from it. See the section “Termination” of the GNU GPL 3
for details for that particular example.
