Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Manchester Anarchist Bookfair, 7th June 2008

[Dave Page]

On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 07:18:16AM +0100, Lucy wrote:

> Also, (prepares for flaming) I'd be unwilling to distribute just
> gNewSense CDs - for the target audience I think we'd need a pile of
> OpenCDs and a easy-to-use distro like Ubuntu too.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here, but hopefully in a
respectful way :)

I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of handing out Ubuntu CDs in the
name of free software, and giving people the impression that Ubuntu *is*
free software. This misconception is difficult enough to counter among
people who are aware of the intricacies of free software.

Now, if you were to hand someone an Ubuntu CD while saying something
like "Ubuntu is a popular GNU/Linux distribution which contains mostly
free software, but with some proprietary software to improve
hardware compatiability", I'd have a lot less of a problem with it. If
we were burning our own CDs, we could even put that on the label or
envelope.

I get the impresion that people think that gNewSense is likely to "fail"
on a wide variety of hardware, and that Ubuntu is hence better to
distribute. I'm not sure how valid that claim is - I've downloaded a
gNewSense CD to try on my own systems, but haven't had time to
experiment with it yet.

I'm also of the opinion that the audience at something like the
Anarchist Bookfair is more likely to be interested in a purely free
distro like gNewSense than the "shallow goal of popularity" [1] offered
by Ubuntu.

I'm happy to give people a choice between Ubuntu and gNewSense, provided
that it's an informed choice.

Dave

[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/use-free-software.html
-- 
Dave Page <address@hidden>
Jabber: address@hidden