Change for Caldera OpenLinux Workstation

Lars Weber me at lars.in-berlin.de
Thu Jun 28 17:05:03 UTC 2001


Greetings Hong!

>>>>> "Hong" == Hong Feng <fred at mail.rons.net.cn> writes:

  >>> I think RMS offered a nice idea when he was in China last May, i.e.
  >>> make a list or table list all the so-called "Linux" distributions,
  >>> and index the distances of them to our pure GNU/Linux by marks, and
  >>> publish the indexing result on www.gnu.org.
  >> 
  >> Yes, that would be a really good idea!

  Hong> if all of us in the mailing list like this idea, then we need to
  Hong> draft a set of criteria to evalute the freedom degrees of the
  Hong> distributions.  Any comments on the criteria are welcome to send
  Hong> me to collect.

I too really like the general idea, but I'm not sure whether a list or a
table with simple marks is the right approach (such things usually tend to
oversimplify and to mislead people).

What might be better is a simple webpage with distributions categorized by
the following criteria:

  a) Consists entirely of Free Software

  b) Free-Software-only version is available

  c) Can be turned into Free-Software-only without too much of a hassle

  d) Difficult or impossible to use without non-free software

(Distributions that fall into group `a' would be preferred, whereas
anything below `b' would be discouraged.  It might also be preferrable not
to mention d-rated distributions at all.)

Along with each distribution could then also be a general description,
remarks about their Free Software friendliness, etc.

Gruß,
Lars

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[ Lars Weber ]--------<me at lars.in-berlin.de>------[ GPG-ID: 1383B42E ]
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