Ubuntu's not GNU/Linux?

Tue Apr 20 06:38:38 UTC 2010

Hi there;

and first off, thanks a bunch for your thoughts...

Am 19.04.2010 16:54, schrieb Graziano:
> Users acquired in this way are not good users if you don't explain them
> the four freedoms and the importance of free software, the importance for
> you to have FULL control of your computer.

But they will never have full control of their computer anyhow, no 
matter whether or not using software libre, the same way I have no "full 
control" over my car, my DVD player, my t.v. , ... - I know how to 
operate these, but I have next to no knowledge about their internals. 
Especially, if given the choice between a computer "fully working" and a 
computer "fully under their control", what would they choose?

 > Why should we point at the worst? Why are you comparing with the iBad?
 > You should avoid compromises and fight for free software.
 > I know lots of people who use ubuntu..  with skype... picasa..  and
 > so on.

Maybe. I know many of these who run "proprietary" (free-beer) software 
on GNU/Linux, but I also know a lot of folks (including server 
administrators) who try getting "the most freedom" on top of Microsoft 
Windows. The world's grey, not black-and-white, and I guess we are 
making a huge mistake by not supporting people striving for "as much 
freedom as possible" rather than "all-free-or-nothing-free". That's what 
I fight for - spreading "free software" to as many people as possible to 
the widest possible extent allowed by their everyday working requirements.

> What's the difference between using "some" non free sofware and "all" non
> free software in the areas where it is available?

As much freedom as possible, given most people out there don't use the 
computer just to "have a computer" but rather to get some kind of work 
done. Personally, I dived into GNU/Linux in 1996 after reading the GNU 
manifesto for the first time, and I figured out that this is the idea I 
wanted to support. These days, in a cold winter night, I discarded all 
of my Windows95 installation to make room for a distribution which 
doesn't even exist anymore these days. Rendered my sound card unusable, 
but I didn't care until some weeks later I figured out how to patch the 
kernel and get it to work again.

But the point is: (a) At this time being, most of my critical components 
(display, graphics card, drive controllers, dial-up modem...) were 
supported and working with GNU/Linux so, asides sound, I had no real 
loss in functionality. And, more important, (b), I was a computer 
science minor these days, and most of my daily "work" involved writing 
lecture notes (LaTeX) or learning data structures and algorithms 
(Pascal, C) - both fields where GNU/Linux excels at then and now. Things 
would have been thoroughly different if I, say, was a design student 
these days, determined to use the (proprietary) tools required in these 
fields of study to get homework done. This would have made a migration 
procedure line mine pretty much impossible. Period. :)

> Where do you draw the line?

I think this generally is a rather personal question each and every user 
has to answer on his/her own. From my point of view, I prefer freedom, 
but I still have to pay attention to the fact that, ultimately, I am 
part of a company and in some sort of responsibility for things to work 
there. So, it's about compromises here as well. All life is about 
compromises, each and every day, and software freedom makes no exception 
in my opinion. Two examples:

(1) We run a bunch of IBM servers and we run them using a RHEL 
derivative and some (non-free) IBM software agent. Why? Because we need 
a pretty high SLA for these machines, and service delivery in case of 
trouble, here, depends upon filing certain log information generated by 
this very agent. The agent is available for RHEL, SLES and Windows. 
Given the "all-or-nothing" approach of "there's no difference between 'a 
little' and 'all proprietary' software", I see three options to choose from:

  - Option a: Agree with the "all-or-nothing" philosophy, completely 
give up on software libre and run Windows on these boxes.

  - Option b: Agree with the "all-or-nothing" philosophy, run a stripped 
down Debian distribution, lose the support, be left out in the cold if 
anything goes wrong and, in the end, fail to provide our customers with 
the service level _we_ have to stand up for (we have been close to this 
in the past, that's why we're talking vendor support and IBM hardware here).

  - Option c: Go a "middle path", choose some RHEL derivative which is 
"accepted" to work along the lines of the support contract TOS, and have 
as much freedom as possible on these systems knowing that 100% freedom 
is not possible, even though nagging IBM as good as we can by stating 
that we would _prefer_ to run something else on these boxes.

To avoid any comments on that: Yes, we've been searching both local and 
global vendors to find someone providing mission-critical SLAs support 
entirely on top of a software libre platform. Tried a local "bare-metal" 
vendor and suffered. Anyone who knows someone who can do that in 
Germany, feel free to step forth.

(2) As we do document management as a hosted/managed service for 
construction sites, most of the files we have to deal with are HPGL/2, 
DWF and some more or less arcane CAD formats (AutoCAD, Microstation, 
...). On our workstations we use a (proprietary) multi-format viewer 
supporting 1000+ file types (not counting these supported by tools like 
imagemagick), and "online" we do have an embedded JavaBean viewer, 
proprietary, supporting something next to 500 of these file types 
(again, imagemagick & friends not supported). Though I have been 
searching for that literally for the last 7 years, so far I just came 
across a couple of semi-dead projects doing something resembling HPGL/2 
tooling (and providing a _pretty_ rudimentary viewer, definitely not 
suitable for our internal or even our external users), not even talking 
about CAD. Again, in niche fields like this, the question pretty often 
is not "proprietary tool vs. libre tool" but rather "proprietary tool 
vs. no tool at all".

> We must fight non free software, not accept compromises just to get some
> "non free" users.

Yes. But the consequence of this "all-or-nothing" approach, in the end, 
leaves a lot of users out "in the cold" with a proprietary-only 
environment instead of aiming at providing _as many_ users as possible 
with _as much freedom_ as possible given their personal environment, 
requirements, use cases, hardware, ... .

> Try instead of using a fully free distribution, contribute to it, make it
> better.
> More people using a fully free distro means that distro will have a big
> weight, a big user base and so hardware vendors could choose it instead of
> ubuntu.

You are right, and yet it doesn't work out. Everyone out here around me 
who is more deep into GNU/Linux and software libre, by now, has/is 
spending money on mobile players that support OGG files. Did it make a 
change so far? No. The majority of people is even worse and goes for 
things like the iPod which are way more non-free than any mp3 player. 
Why? Are they stupid not to see the kind of strong platform dependency 
they are running into? Are they too ignorant not to care? I don't think 
either of the both is true - they simply make buying decisions based 
upon different assumptions. We have to show them that freedom is 
valuable and important _and_ possible in their case. One thing I often 
experience while at GNU/Linux install parties are communications like this:

Me: "Look, this is software libre, now your notebook runs completely 
without any proprietary software."
Them: "But I can't connect to my WLAN anymore, my touchpad gestures seem 
broken, and I can't load and process clips off my DV cam anymore."
Me: "Yes, this is because your WLAN requires proprietary firmware to 
run, because your touchpad is supported on Windows only and your DV cam 
uses a proprietary protocol to communicate with a very special piece of 
software only."
Them: "...?"
<lengthy discussion about "proprietary" vs. "open">
Them: "So concluding, I see I have to choose whether running a 'software 
libre' system or doing the work I need/want to do with my machine."
Me: "Solution would be, of course, to nag your vendors or buy hardware 
which supports 'software libre'."
Them: "So while by then I am 'free' in terms of software, I am forced to 
by new hardware for that? Strange perception of 'freedom'..."

-> ... and this is where we're talking "all-or-nothing" again. This guy 
will be lost for "software libre" for quite a long time, left with the 
nimbus / opinion that it doesn't work. Giving him/her a "mostly free" 
software which at least has all the hardware supported really might have 
changed things here.

Don't get me wrong: I am not promoting the massive inclusion of binaries 
like flash player, acrobat reader (why?) or mono/c# in a "software 
libre" default installation. However, the very moment a user finds half 
of the hardware in his/her device unsupported lacking firmware in 
example, I think communicating the idea of "software libre" to end users 
gets way more difficult because the hurdle to be taken to reach those is 
rather high.

Let them have a good experience. Let's make it smooth and shiny and as 
great, appealing, "visually stunning" as many people consider MacOS to 
be. Let them find out that software libre is way more than "just" a lack 
of binary drivers, the absence of picasa or the fact that the flash 
player is not Adobe Flash Player. At the moment, I think the fact that 
every second or so user is about to run some sort of Windows 
installation inside a VirtualBox or whatever is way more worrying than 
the fact of having a few binary firmware fragments included in some 
drivers...

Just my €0.02 of course...
K.

-- 
Kristian Rink * http://pictorial.zimmer428.net # kawazu at jabber.org
"What was once thought can never be unthought."
(Duerrenmatt - 'Die Physiker')