Fwd: Most 'Free' Linux distro

[Garreau, Alexandre]

Le 29/07/2014 à 13h31, Werner Koch a écrit :
> On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 08:09, galex-713 at galex-713.eu said:
>
>> For exemple, a Debian *OS* is *by default* fully free, but Debian
>> *project* (or at least people too close to it) often encourage you to
>> install proprietary software, notably through nonfree repository, where
>
> Right, I am one of those who would encourage on pragmatic reasons to use
> the non-free repository to install documentation for most GNU
> software.

Well, a repository for non-free documentation would be better, since
documentation hasn’t to be as free as functional software (for reasons
explained by FSF) and therefore doesn’t cause ethical problems, while
proprietary software does.

> I would never encourage anyone to use Trisquel because that renders any
> desktop machine useless due to FSF's layman opinion on the openness of
> firmware and hardware.

I noticed a better compatibility than you say. Most of time just wifi
card doesn’t work on laptop (so we need purchasing another at
Thinkpinguin for instance), sometimes graphic card… That’s all. Most of
times it just works.

Personally I find worse to encourage anyone to use the non-free
counterpart to Trisquel, Ubuntu, for same reasons explained by FSF:
spywares, proprietary software promotion, undeblobbed kernel… but also
because it became a big commercial thing, and therefore it’s goal cannot
anymore be the interest of users freedom, but only profit (hopping both
goals don’t go against each other… but it inevitably tends to happens,
and then market laws just applies).

> I have never seen that Debian encourages the use of proprietary
> software; that is cheap FSF propaganda.

If not Debian, at least people close to it: people on main IRC channels
regularly do it, and Debian wiki does too. I wasn’t repeating what FSF
said, I was talking of my own experience. Then of course official Debian
project claimed that they can’t work enough to correct everything of
that, and that’s true. They can’t censor irc channel for that, and they
can’t check all wiki edits.

> Debian is the best OS if you want to use _fully free software_ according
> to a solid definition established by a large democratic group

Well, no, there’s also the nonfree repository which makes Debian quite
compatible with non-free-software-friendly hardware.

> and not by some real world blind people

Please do not use any handicap, disability or disease as an insult, it’s
humiliating and insulting for really disabled or diseased people. Just
don’t.

> who even urge their co-GNU hackers to write non free documentation.

No, putting invariant sections, afaik, isn’t an obligation, it’s
possibility, because freedom to modify history knowledge doesn’t make
sense. So the documentation stays free for everything that it
should. Stay pragmatic, for once, it’s Debian who applied blindly rules
without thinking to reasons to do it.

Nonetheless that doesn’t make me think these invariant sections *should*
be here, simply because I prefer think to “what is it useful to
prohibit” instead of “what is it useful to allow”, as rms/fsf does.
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