* Sam Tuke mail@samtuke.com [2010-04-16 13:16:30 +0100]:

This is a mailing list for discussion about Free Software, and I felt that it was a good place to make my observation as it affects GNU/Linux when such an important distribution acts like this.

It is absolutely fine to discuss this topic here.

Best wishes, Matthias

I find it hard to believe that it is a licensing issue - many other commercial distributions mention Linux repeatedly on their websites (Suse, RHEL, Mandriva...), and if it were because of this then why would they be able to put it on other pages, and just not the front page?

Linux is a trademark (and I've gone through the sub-licensing process of it myself), but there is nothing stopping companies referencing it - "based on Linux", "a version of Linux" etc. are all acceptable references to the term.

Also GNU's opinion isn't relevant to Ubuntu's ability to refer to Linux as far as I can see - they have no rights to the word or its application; what power could they have to prevent an organisation from using it?

I'm not aware of any good reason for Ubuntu hiding the fact that its based on GNU/Linux.

Sam,

That is because they can't. It is about licensing. They ship non-free or proprietary software with their distribution, such as Flash which prohibits them from adhering to the 4 freedoms of the GNU philosophy. You can find GNU's own stance on Ubuntu here.http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/common-distros.html

Gregory

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 02:26:14PM +0200, Hugo Roy wrote:

Again, I personally have no problem with that. My main problem are:

• Ubuntu One is proprietary server
• The Front page says Open Source instead of Free Software

But I don't think it's worth having that discussion. Canonical has made their choice on that. Let's talk about important issues like Ubuntu One.

Canonical tries add sources of revenue other than services. They made this shift (as far as I can tell from the press) after Jane Silber became CEO and Matt Asa became COO.

They want to make money by proprietary cloud services (like Ubuntu One), selling proprietary software (see their shop) and other immaterial commodities (music, films) through their store. They try to imitate Apple in this respect.

Their Music Store contains music in patented formats, their Software Center was named Software Store in past and I saw screenshots which showed a price tag in the user interface which is an indicator that they either want to sell proprietary software or want to make it easy to company which sell proprietary software to install it on Ubuntu. Moreover, their cloud service isn't Free Software and it took years with Launchpad to be released under a free licence.

The changes of the user interface and their branding and corporate identity in Ubuntu 10.04 are a clear indicator for this change of their business model.

Since I saw what is coming in Ubuntu 10.04 and what happend to Canonical, I can't recommend to install Ubuntu.

Regards, Matthias-Christian

If Linux is only the Kernel and GNU only the GNU projects, it is a small part of the whole package that Ubuntu is, and so I am not bothered that it is not included in the brand they are building. On the contrary, it makes things clear for users.

Please do not confuse the GNU system with a set of random projects stiched together, it is a completely free operating system which Ubuntu is a derivative of (together with Linux.

Am 19.04.2010 13:36, schrieb Chris Woolfrey:

Definitely agreed! It seems an odd omission, and i wonder if it has anything to do with their fairly 'commercial' approach to spreading their OS? They do often seem to be 'fighting' Mac and Windows on the other two's terms.

Yes. But then again, as far as I see things, Ubuntu's the only GNU/Linux distribution out there to have somethin akin to the "Ubuntu Code Of Conduct" or the Ubuntu philosophy outlined on the web site. No "open community version" along with an "enterprise version enhanced by proprietary add-ons", and yet not a "free" platform leaving most of the users it is aiming at out in the cold because, after doing the first boot, they figure out all of a sudden that some (or, in worst cases) most of their hardware is not working anymore.

No, it's _not_ good from a software libre supporters point of view. But the approach of #1 goal being making a "smoothlessly usable, streamlined, well-thought-out" distribution seems sane from a pragmatic point of view. Yes, there's an active crowd out there knowing about the advantages of software libre. They know about the four freedoms, and they know why they would want that. And the rest? As I have to over and over again experience within my environment (being surrounded by a lot of people who "just work" with their computers), people don't know and, at least at their given state of mind, don't _want_ to know/care. They go with MS Windows et al simply because "everyone's using it so it can't be all that bad".

Give these people an idealistically crafted "libre" GNU/Linux distribution which doesn't even allow them to connect to their home WLAN because their notebook features some arcane WiFi device and, after that, tell them to please buy a piece of hardware which doesn't require "proprietary" (you'll have an interesting effect using this term in such a conversation) drivers is the surest ever possible way of making them stay the **** away from software libre and never ever touch it again.

I mean, after all, shouldn't we face it? While we are fighting whether or not Ubuntu is "software libre", people seem to just rush out to get an iPad which, talking about its software, it neither "libre" nor just "open source". Or they go for that cheap discounter-next-door box coming with a bare-bones Windows 7 version because at the very least they know this world somehow. Making people who don't care (yet?) about "software libre" interested or even enthusiastic about this idea surely won't work by providing them with something that "feels better" (to us) but actually, eventually works worse (to them). From that point of view, I think software libre community indeed should embrace Ubuntu / Canonical as someone (maybe the first) GNU/Linux based company so far aiming at making a platform with a smooth, straightforward, comfortable and convenient end user experience, to (as I have seen quite sometimes here on LinuxTag events...) attract people who would have never even touched a GNU/Linux system before...

K.

Hi there;

and first off, thanks a bunch for your thoughts...

Am 19.04.2010 16:54, schrieb Graziano:

Users acquired in this way are not good users if you don't explain them the four freedoms and the importance of free software, the importance for you to have FULL control of your computer.

But they will never have full control of their computer anyhow, no matter whether or not using software libre, the same way I have no "full control" over my car, my DVD player, my t.v. , ... - I know how to operate these, but I have next to no knowledge about their internals. Especially, if given the choice between a computer "fully working" and a computer "fully under their control", what would they choose?

Why should we point at the worst? Why are you comparing with the iBad? You should avoid compromises and fight for free software. I know lots of people who use ubuntu.. with skype... picasa.. and so on.

Maybe. I know many of these who run "proprietary" (free-beer) software on GNU/Linux, but I also know a lot of folks (including server administrators) who try getting "the most freedom" on top of Microsoft Windows. The world's grey, not black-and-white, and I guess we are making a huge mistake by not supporting people striving for "as much freedom as possible" rather than "all-free-or-nothing-free". That's what I fight for - spreading "free software" to as many people as possible to the widest possible extent allowed by their everyday working requirements.

What's the difference between using "some" non free sofware and "all" non free software in the areas where it is available?

As much freedom as possible, given most people out there don't use the computer just to "have a computer" but rather to get some kind of work done. Personally, I dived into GNU/Linux in 1996 after reading the GNU manifesto for the first time, and I figured out that this is the idea I wanted to support. These days, in a cold winter night, I discarded all of my Windows95 installation to make room for a distribution which doesn't even exist anymore these days. Rendered my sound card unusable, but I didn't care until some weeks later I figured out how to patch the kernel and get it to work again.

But the point is: (a) At this time being, most of my critical components (display, graphics card, drive controllers, dial-up modem...) were supported and working with GNU/Linux so, asides sound, I had no real loss in functionality. And, more important, (b), I was a computer science minor these days, and most of my daily "work" involved writing lecture notes (LaTeX) or learning data structures and algorithms (Pascal, C) - both fields where GNU/Linux excels at then and now. Things would have been thoroughly different if I, say, was a design student these days, determined to use the (proprietary) tools required in these fields of study to get homework done. This would have made a migration procedure line mine pretty much impossible. Period. :)

Where do you draw the line?

I think this generally is a rather personal question each and every user has to answer on his/her own. From my point of view, I prefer freedom, but I still have to pay attention to the fact that, ultimately, I am part of a company and in some sort of responsibility for things to work there. So, it's about compromises here as well. All life is about compromises, each and every day, and software freedom makes no exception in my opinion. Two examples:

(1) We run a bunch of IBM servers and we run them using a RHEL derivative and some (non-free) IBM software agent. Why? Because we need a pretty high SLA for these machines, and service delivery in case of trouble, here, depends upon filing certain log information generated by this very agent. The agent is available for RHEL, SLES and Windows. Given the "all-or-nothing" approach of "there's no difference between 'a little' and 'all proprietary' software", I see three options to choose from:

- Option a: Agree with the "all-or-nothing" philosophy, completely give up on software libre and run Windows on these boxes.

- Option b: Agree with the "all-or-nothing" philosophy, run a stripped down Debian distribution, lose the support, be left out in the cold if anything goes wrong and, in the end, fail to provide our customers with the service level _we_ have to stand up for (we have been close to this in the past, that's why we're talking vendor support and IBM hardware here).

- Option c: Go a "middle path", choose some RHEL derivative which is "accepted" to work along the lines of the support contract TOS, and have as much freedom as possible on these systems knowing that 100% freedom is not possible, even though nagging IBM as good as we can by stating that we would _prefer_ to run something else on these boxes.

To avoid any comments on that: Yes, we've been searching both local and global vendors to find someone providing mission-critical SLAs support entirely on top of a software libre platform. Tried a local "bare-metal" vendor and suffered. Anyone who knows someone who can do that in Germany, feel free to step forth.

(2) As we do document management as a hosted/managed service for construction sites, most of the files we have to deal with are HPGL/2, DWF and some more or less arcane CAD formats (AutoCAD, Microstation, ...). On our workstations we use a (proprietary) multi-format viewer supporting 1000+ file types (not counting these supported by tools like imagemagick), and "online" we do have an embedded JavaBean viewer, proprietary, supporting something next to 500 of these file types (again, imagemagick & friends not supported). Though I have been searching for that literally for the last 7 years, so far I just came across a couple of semi-dead projects doing something resembling HPGL/2 tooling (and providing a _pretty_ rudimentary viewer, definitely not suitable for our internal or even our external users), not even talking about CAD. Again, in niche fields like this, the question pretty often is not "proprietary tool vs. libre tool" but rather "proprietary tool vs. no tool at all".

We must fight non free software, not accept compromises just to get some "non free" users.

Yes. But the consequence of this "all-or-nothing" approach, in the end, leaves a lot of users out "in the cold" with a proprietary-only environment instead of aiming at providing _as many_ users as possible with _as much freedom_ as possible given their personal environment, requirements, use cases, hardware, ... .

Try instead of using a fully free distribution, contribute to it, make it better. More people using a fully free distro means that distro will have a big weight, a big user base and so hardware vendors could choose it instead of ubuntu.

You are right, and yet it doesn't work out. Everyone out here around me who is more deep into GNU/Linux and software libre, by now, has/is spending money on mobile players that support OGG files. Did it make a change so far? No. The majority of people is even worse and goes for things like the iPod which are way more non-free than any mp3 player. Why? Are they stupid not to see the kind of strong platform dependency they are running into? Are they too ignorant not to care? I don't think either of the both is true - they simply make buying decisions based upon different assumptions. We have to show them that freedom is valuable and important _and_ possible in their case. One thing I often experience while at GNU/Linux install parties are communications like this:

Me: "Look, this is software libre, now your notebook runs completely without any proprietary software." Them: "But I can't connect to my WLAN anymore, my touchpad gestures seem broken, and I can't load and process clips off my DV cam anymore." Me: "Yes, this is because your WLAN requires proprietary firmware to run, because your touchpad is supported on Windows only and your DV cam uses a proprietary protocol to communicate with a very special piece of software only." Them: "...?" <lengthy discussion about "proprietary" vs. "open"> Them: "So concluding, I see I have to choose whether running a 'software libre' system or doing the work I need/want to do with my machine." Me: "Solution would be, of course, to nag your vendors or buy hardware which supports 'software libre'." Them: "So while by then I am 'free' in terms of software, I am forced to by new hardware for that? Strange perception of 'freedom'..."

-> ... and this is where we're talking "all-or-nothing" again. This guy will be lost for "software libre" for quite a long time, left with the nimbus / opinion that it doesn't work. Giving him/her a "mostly free" software which at least has all the hardware supported really might have changed things here.

Don't get me wrong: I am not promoting the massive inclusion of binaries like flash player, acrobat reader (why?) or mono/c# in a "software libre" default installation. However, the very moment a user finds half of the hardware in his/her device unsupported lacking firmware in example, I think communicating the idea of "software libre" to end users gets way more difficult because the hurdle to be taken to reach those is rather high.

Let them have a good experience. Let's make it smooth and shiny and as great, appealing, "visually stunning" as many people consider MacOS to be. Let them find out that software libre is way more than "just" a lack of binary drivers, the absence of picasa or the fact that the flash player is not Adobe Flash Player. At the moment, I think the fact that every second or so user is about to run some sort of Windows installation inside a VirtualBox or whatever is way more worrying than the fact of having a few binary firmware fragments included in some drivers...

Just my €0.02 of course... K.

Am 20.04.2010 10:22, schrieb Graziano:

I think we should try to achieve freedom when it is possible.

Yes, definitely. I don't think our opinions differ here. :)

What I see, instead, is free software activists installing ubuntu and then giving up without explaiing the four freedoms, the philosophy behind the GNU operating system and the fact that ubuntu is not a fully free software distro.

But the first thing is not Ubuntus fault but rather "just"(?) a problem of the activists involved, isn't it? I mean, explaining the "four freedoms" is something that has to happen in any case, not? Even running a "completely software libre" platform, people suddenly could come up with the idea to, in example, run VirtualBox and a Windows installation inside of that. This kind of "user education" is required no matter how free the system to start with initially was/is.

Fully free software GNU/Linux distributions are here now. Let's try to install, push, explain those ones instead of just "installing ubuntu" first, would you?

In most cases - yes, and yet I would like to make this depending upon the very user and situation. I still consider the Ubuntu Philosophy a good entry point into that there is more about "software libre" than just downloading free bits off the internet. Even while the Ubuntu Philosophy is not really what "software libre" is all about, it might give some user completely new to that kind of approach (and eventually considering software just another "product") an easy-on first contact point for learning that there eventually is more to it, and there is more to it one should actually care about...

K.

Michael, *;

Am 20.04.2010 21:59, schrieb Michael Kesper:

Thank you for your very long but good post!

No problem. :) Actually, I've been a quiet lurker on this list for quite some time, but some of the discussions goin' on here recently just feel "strange" somehow... To add some thoughts:

I'd say it's important to show people the different mindsets. If I'm forced to use windows (at work), I'm always again astonished how difficult it is to get the tools to just do your work, how much pain it is to keep everything updated etc.

Yes. Same here. Well, not exactly the same: I am not forced to use Windows. As a company, we're open to both "open source" and "software libre", and I am using software libre on my day-to-day development notebook and, asides this, as much as somewhat possible... with the compromises necessary and outlined before (most notably the viewer problem which, even though this easily would be possible regarding any other applications we use/need, so far forces us to stay with Windows on workstations).

The tools are all inclusive. Maybe you can also show that even people who are not programmers can help A LOT by translating, sending bug reports, designing themes etc.

Yes. Indeed. But I think in many respects, there is one big field where Ubuntu, despite all "libre vs. non-libre" discussions, excels: By putting the user in the center of things.

Take something like the "100 papercuts" project [1], and put that in relation to your experience outlined earlier (how difficult things are on Windows on many respects), which I share with some of our users (some of them right now suffering because our viewer manufacturer, for whichever stupid reason, decided to go with "ribbon" user interface in its latest release):

Most users who "just" want to get work done suffer in day-to-day work simply for usability, accessibility, ergonomy reasons. "Open community" (including software libre people and the whole crowd "just" focussed on building open-source software) really could make a difference here simply by taking the user "more seriously", by making him/her more than just a customer. That, to me, is the "human" thing about Ubuntu, and it seems reasonable (and, overally, success of that distribution even among non-technical users seems to prove this approach right).

Or, the other way 'round: To most users (leaving out idealistic / enthusiastic people like you, me and the rest of folks around here), I think switching to software libre / becoming active somehow needs good reasons beyond "just" freedom/liberty, as this reason is something they eventually aren't experiencing as an advantage anyhow. If you don't have someone to share software with, don't want to look at or even modify source code, and so far never experienced either the legal or the technical boundaries of a system like MacOS or Windows, what advantage (asides the obvious fact of "being free", having total control) does "software libre" bring you?

Let's compare it to motivating people to buy groceries made in fair trade and/or ecological / sustainable agriculture: Surely, there is a group of people buying right _this_ kind of products for ethical or political reasons. But to "Joe Average" (who doesn't really know/care about these things), in the end it comes down to products (a) being more expensive, (b) certain products not being available at some times of the year (you don't have strawberries in Europe in winter...), (c) eventually looking a little less "perfect", looking a little less like right off a food magazine cover shot (look at some biologically grown apples and you know what I mean). So, how to make this "Joe Average" interested in biological food? Give him reasons _he_ will see as advantages: Products being healthier (because of the lack of any chemicals along the production trail), products tasting more intense (compare the taste of tomatoes grown in-house in winter to those grown outside in the sun, given the time it takes...), knowing better what is inside because after all these are the tomatoes, potatoes, ... grown by the farmer just next door not packaged and imported by some global corporation, ... . Being provided with advantages like this, "Joe Average" eventually will see why this is good for him/her _besides_ being "just" ethically / politically better.

And, to get back to software, this is where I see Ubuntus "user-first" approach come in: Provide the user with reasons to use software libre, even those users that don't do that "for the sake of liberty". Provide them with a framework stable enough to have as much freedom as somehow possible. Maybe the most constructive thing we could do about this would be to embrace Ubuntu and its community and gently guide users into values of software libre, gently being the acceptance that sometimes compromises have been made or else, the overall freedom of this user might drastically be reduced (as in worst case (s)he gets back to Windows, finding him-/herself unable to open what seems an "ordinary" PDF file on a software libre platform). This is what I do these days, this is how I try making people aware of free software, and at the very least, with Ubuntu working out of the box on most systems, the hurdle to even show people what software libre can do is incredibly lower. That's good, I'd say. :)

K.

[1]https://launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts