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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