3rd Fellowship Raffle to attract more Fellows

[Georg C. F. Greve]

 || On Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:46:49 -0400
 || Matt Lee <mattl at gnu.org> wrote: 

 ml> If you want to get these things made free, put out a call for
 ml> help on the website,

That is why we asked the Fellows who wants to help freeing these
devices, for they are not yet entirely free. So several people, you
included, have applied to get the device to free it entirely, so that
in the future these might become entirely free devices.


 ml> Does that mean we should abandon our ethics for the sake of
 ml> convienience?

No.


 ml> I can't get my ATI card to work with free drivers, so is the FSFE
 ml> going to recommend I use proprietary drivers?

No.


 ml> By the way, the machine is an all-in-one unit, so I can't swap
 ml> out the card.  What do you suggest I do?

It seems there are plenty of better alternatives to be had in that
area, so I'd recommend you get yourself another machine that does not
require you to give up your freedom.


 ml> I think if Mark Shuttleworth had wanted to build a distro, he
 ml> would have done it anyway, regardless of Debian.

Maybe, although you might be underestimating the work that is inside
Debian. But any of this would be pure speculation, and I've been
talking about facts.


 ml> The fact that Debian provided a lot of the groundwork is a great
 ml> resource, but that doesn't mean people should be recommending
 ml> Ubuntu or Debian to others.

Nobody suggested recommending them.


 >> In the case of Ubuntu, the distribution was available without cost
 >> on the internet. That is not true for hardware. But if someone had
 >> told me that they wanted to create Gnewsense and they needed access
 >> to Ubuntu to do that job, I would indeed have sent them a DVD.

 ml> RMS using Debian is very different from RMS promoting Debian. I'm
 ml> sure if you emailed RMS five years ago and asked him which distro
 ml> to install, he wouldn't have had an answer for you, or would have
 ml> told you that no distro was a good distro as they all shipped
 ml> proprietary software.

What you write seems unrelated to what I wrote.

Since I was discussing the issue with RMS five years ago, I know his
answer to the issue, which I seem to remember being a little more
balanced than what you present here.

When asked, he told people that he was using Debian, but he also told
them that he wasn't happy with Debian because it had the non-free
repository (that he of course had switched off) and he could not
recommend using it.

He would also tell you that he finds it important that someone does
the work of providing a pure Free Software distribution. He was also
considering to start such a distribution off Debian, because Debian
came closest to what he wanted.


 ml> If I ask the FSFE Fellowship which is a good PDA, am I going to
 ml> be told to buy an N800 because it's almost free software?

No.

We would tell you that no PDA is good enough today, but that it would
be very important to have one that runs only Free Software.

We would also tell you that there are some devices on which this seems
possible, but that they are not yet good enough and require more work.

Regards,
Georg

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom!     (http://www.fsfe.org)
What everyone should know about DRM                   (http://DRM.info)
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