Alex Hudson wrote:
FSF doesn't promote Debian, because Debian has non-free.
Correct. If someone uses non-free software that means that he/she doesn't value his/her freedom. But if someone, particularly if this someone is one of the major GNU distributions, a free software project, offers proprietary software to its users hiding behind the "Our priority are our users" slogan, well, that is not only totally unacceptable, it is disgusting.
Debian doesn't include some FSF documents, because they believe they are non-free.
Imagine how this looks like to us, a poor flock of Debian users -- an advice (not really, a "statement") from the Debian Project, a project that *distributes* non-free software, that GFDL is conditionally free (actually, that's the statement as per the GR, the debian-legal folks' consensus is that it is non-free under all circumstances). I would not accept advice towards free software and documentation from someone who considers distribution of non-free software a justified action, an ethically and morally acceptable thing. This is a paradox. At the same time, at debian-devel-announce there is an announcement of the *absolutely the same non-free as it was* Java and some developers are happy about the inclusion in the archive! This is absolute hypocrisy, while one cannot observe anything similar in the FSF's actions.
That both sides don't agree with each other over small areas (Debian's non-free, or the FSF's GFDL'd docs) really doesn't matter a huge amount in the grand scheme of things IMHO.
If you consider promoting and distributing of non-free software a small area, that's ok. But it is fundamental NOT to do that for those who support the Free Software Movement.
The FSF and Debian have vastly more in common than they disagree over.
I'd love if this was true -- as a devoted Debian user and maintainer of some (unofficial) packages, I can hardly explain how the present situation hurts me. However, many "technical" guys have joined the Debian Project and their votes count. Obviously it is far more important for them to be a "successful" distribution than to stand firm behind the ideals and principles of Free Software.
The BSD community also don't think the GPL is 100% free. We'll always have these disagreements. We're a broad church, and will always have these disagreements. It doesn't help to keep going over them though, I think - I'm sure people on both sides understand the other's position.
We consider the BSD-like licences free with the important exception that these licences do not *protect* the freedom -- and we consider protecting the freedom an extremely important thing. I always wondered why we don't strongly object against your licencing policy while the BSD community had always fiercly opposed the GPL.
Just imagine, if every free software in the world was under the GPL, Apple couldn't have managed to create Muck OS X (some people call this system technically superior and are seduced to use it), there wouldn't be proprieatary variants of Apache, etc, etc. We would have our Freedom Island intact and expanding.
Cheers and good luck.