Fwd: Most 'Free' Linux distro

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos]

On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 2:14 PM, Garreau, Alexandre
<galex-713 at galex-713.eu> wrote:

>>> 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.

Well, as the debian stance showed, it causes ethical problems to a
large part of the free software community.

>> 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:

I believe Werner was arguing on Debian. Ubuntu is a different thing.

>> 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.

Could you be more precise? I've been using Debian for 20 years, and
I've never seen any endorsement or encouragement of not-free software.
On the contrary it encourages the use of free software (see
https://www.debian.org/intro/free).

>> 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.

Non-free software is easy to replace by free software. Non-free
hardware or hardware with non-free drivers has costs to be replaced
that may be insignificant to you, but not to many others that want to
join the community. Denying access to the internet because someone is
on a laptop that its wireless card requires a binary blob to be loaded
is absurd and pretty denies access to free software on commodity
hardware.

> 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.

Please don't force your newspeak. Blindness was a good term to
describe the issue (I refer you to any english language dictionary for
the definition of blind).

regards,
Nikos