Regarding "me" being at mercy of the developer of the [non-free?]
program, this is why the manual must be written in such a way that makes
non-free programs bad (and possibly, non-free FUNCTIONAL data bad too).

Without wanting to get away from the discussion, now that I think about
it, I think that the tricky part of making the documentation is related
to finding a free software that works well even on non-free operating
systems for the user to place his copies of GNU+Linux-libre Trisquel in
some removable media. Actually, I have seem people recommending the use
of UNetbootin to copy the disk images to a USB, but I avoid making such
recommendations (although I had to use it personally on a copy of
Windows just for the purpose of fixing my personal computer's boot loader).

I don't recommend UNetbootin because it's still unclear to me whether
it's free software or not, either because there's no entry for it on the
Free Software Directory or, optionally, because there's no package for
it on the free operating systems.

As a side note, we could also investigate whether Cygwin is free
software or not, since it provides a copy of GNU Dd (although bugs and
other stuff must be first reported to the Cygwin project, and not to the
GNU Coreutils project[1]).

As another side note: I remember seeing an entry on the Free Software
Directory about a project called Free USB Installer (FUSBI), but it
seems to be non-free software now, as the entry doesn't exist anymore.
Perhaps that software would be the answer for this problem, provided it
is really free software.


REFERENCES


[1]
https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/coreutils-faq.html#I-use-the-Cygwin-toolset-and-I-have-a-problem_002e

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