3rd Fellowship Raffle to attract more Fellows

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

    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.

And that is by distributing immoral and unethical software?  Has the
FSF _ever_ distributed copies of non-free software to its members in
the hope that someone will write a free replacement? No.  Why? Because
distributing non-free software to people is _wrong_, no matter what
the reason is.

You simply do not know if these people will write free replacements or
not.  You cannot know.

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

   No.

Why not? It is exactly the same situation.

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

   No.

That is exactly what people are being told right now with the FSFE
distributing this device to fellows.

   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.

This raffle shows otherwise.