On Tuesday 25 Nov 2008, Mani A wrote:
On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 7:36 AM, Raj Mathur raju@linux-delhi.org
wrote:
Er, why? All that the clause says is that you are allowed to distribute, e.g., nVidia drivers along with Ubuntu on the same CD if you want. It doesn't impact the freedom of free software in any way.
It does deprive users of many of the advantages of FOSS and even OSS. Users are required to trust more closed source stuff. FOSS should mean 100% FOSS not something like 90% OSS and 10% closed source software.
It doesn't deprive users of anything. To be quite frank, 99.9999% of users don't care what licence the software on a Linux CD falls under as long as it works for them and they can obtain and use it for free. There have been and will continue to be pure FOSS Linux distributions, but you probably won't see them gaining much traction in the market.
The users who care enough about the differences between FOSS and proprietary software are in any case clued in enough to be able to choose a distribution which meets their FOSS needs. I prefer not to use proprietary software, so I use Debian which also has a non-free repository. Requiring a licence to prevent bundling of free and non-free software together seems like overkill.
To sum up, people who care about FOSS principles will be able to sift out non-free software anyway. People who don't care about those principles will probably not use a pure-FOSS distribution at all.
Yes, GPL does say that. But most concepts of FOSS try to go beyond that.
Wasn't it RMS who wrote v2 and approved v3 of the GPL? Are you saying that the concepts of FOSS extend far beyond RMS' vision? Be very careful! ;)
Seriously, though, let's distinguish between FOSS as a usage model and FOSS as a concept. I don't necessarily subscribe to the view that everyone should only use FOSS -- IMO everyone should use whatever works for them. If Autoc*d happens to be non-free and my sister-in-law (who's an architect) needs to use it, more power to her! I wouldn't, but then I'm (a) not an architect and (b) slightly more fanatical about these things.
IMO the important goal is to eliminate proprietary software altogether, not to eliminate proprietary software users. If you believe in that goal then you can stop worrying about non-issues like bundling of free and non-free software together in a distribution and instead work towards making the principles of FOSS more entrenched in peoples' minds -- once they believe they will stop using non-free stuff automatically. Make better software so that it is difficult or impossible for proprietary software companies to profit from leasing out software, work towards getting Governments to adopt FOSS and FOSS principles, tell people about the benefits and ideology of FOSS wherever possible (don't become a bore at parties, though :) -- IMO these are some of the ways to eliminate proprietary software.
Regards,
-- Raju