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

[MJ Ray]

"Benjamin Webb" <address@hidden> wrote:
> Put another way, why is swapping out all the higher level apps in
> someones computing experience (web browser, office suite) okay, but
> encouraging them to swap out the low level stuff but not some of the
> middle (drivers) and higher (flash) level stuff is not okay?

Doesn't Ubuntu's policy only cover swapping out the applications in
favour of free software?  It seems to be a happy extra that most of
their kernel and so on is free software, not required by that policy.
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/licensing

In other words, Ubuntu seems in roughly the same category as the
OpenCD... maybe even less free because the CD can contain
non-free-software when it's not an application program, whereas the
non-free bits needed to use the OpenCD aren't on the OpenCD, so the
group isn't distributing it.

Now that this has been explained here, if the group's still fine with
distributing non-free software, then it's fine and I'll stop, but
promoting one of the distributions that aims to be fully free software
would be a good extra option.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237