>Systemd as an init maybe not for the time being. But I meant to systemd as
any of it's components (that can become a dependency), like logind or udev.
I commented about system specific features and software in my first reply.
>I completely agree with the first sentence, GNU should always have freedom
as the first priority. But GNU also has compatibly between *nix systems as a
nice and desirable thing to have, although not a critical requirement of
course. I don't agree with "it is usually good to have". Why usually? Are
there situations where portability isn't good to have?
Yes, in some cases it is better to not to have portability. When there is a
piece of free software that has no proprietary counterpart, or is by far
technically superior to that technical counterpart, then it is usually better
that it runs only on a fully free operating system so that is not portable.
This adds a practical reason for people to use the free operating system.
There is some rough similarity to the effect of Copyleft licenses. Copyleft
licenses directly give an incentive to develop free software, while in this
case, absence of portability just gives a reason to use free software, but as
I explain next, this still results in a similar benefit to that of Copyleft.
The benefit in this case is not in making people who don't care about freedom
of computing use free software because it is more convenient, but in that
this increased usage may result in the free OS be more widely used instead of
proprietary OSs and in turn this reduces the founding and pressure of
proprietary software and promotes development and further adoption of the
free system, which benefits those who we support the free software philosophy
and may lead more people to know about the problems of proprietary software
and centralization, and adopt the free software philosophy. Many of us became
aware of the free software philosophy through using GNU/Linux and initially
not knowing about GNU or free software.
However, it seems than more often, it is better that free software works on
the popular proprietary operating systems to ease transition from those OSs
to a fully free one, and also because it may reduce the usage of proprietary
software in those proprietary OSs in favor of free software, with the
benefits mentioned above.
