3rd Fellowship Raffle to attract more Fellows

Bernhard Reiter reiter at fsfeurope.org
Thu Mar 15 09:15:29 UTC 2007


On Wednesday 14 March 2007 20:37, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    So I take it that if we added some more layers of security to
>    ensure that the devices will actually be used for their intended
>    purpose, namely to make them run with fully Free Software, this
>    would take care of the issue you are seeing?
>
> In my opinion? No.  It would not.  The end result is the same, FSFE is
> distributing non-free softawre to people, and asking them to pay to
> get this non-free software.

The process is a high chance that there is more freedom in the end. 
Compromises like this - take proprietary stuff to liberate it - have been 
made by GNU hackers and FSF before, e.g. running on proprietary operating 
system when the other have been unpractical.

>    What if we asked people to send in some kind of application instead
>    of distributing them by random? What if we introduced some kind of
>    obligation to report back on the progress made in freeing it?
>
> While this makes things it a bit better, it still does not make it
> right.  What would happen if nobody does replace the non-free software
> on these devices?

Then it is likely that it was too hard. 
We cannot be sure that it can be done, until somebody has done it. 
Writing a report about this, will be quite an effort. If this person
has demonstrated the technical abilities the time of the report will be worth 
more money then the device itself.

> Does the person(s) send it back to the FSFE?  Do they keep it? 
> Do they get a refund?  

They keep it and do not get a refund, because of the time spend trying
to liberate it and writing the report. Also it might be that they later
get better ideas and progress with the liberation.

> This opens up alot more problem than it solves, 
> and probobly alot more work on FSFE's side that could 
> be spent doing something more useful.

It is just a proposal for doing something useful with the devices.
Sending them back will also not be good, 
as the necessary public reasoning will be quite a lot of work 
and negative one as well. 

Bernhard
-- 
FSFE -- Coordinator Germany                                   (fsfeurope.org)
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