Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Any folks in Manchester interested in participating in an Ubuntu Global Jam event if I were to organise one?

[MJ Ray]

Bob Ham <address@hidden>
> On 2013-02-19 13:50, MJ Ray wrote:
> > If anyone else believes similar, please come help us develop a
> > distribution that's not controlled by any single corporation
> 
> Yes, please come and help us: [...]

But it's not clear who controls trisquel.  It sells some "associate
memberships" on its website which do not seem to give you membership
of the association - and the sale does not seem to reveal the full
details of the association, which I thought was required under
directive 97/7/EC.  Where is it?  Who are its members?

Trisquel also looks like yet another attempt to sanitise Ubuntu, which
means it's always playing catch-up and you're hoping the blacklist is
complete but has no false-positives.  Even at a quick look, I spotted
one false-positive: 9wm.

The benefit of being based on Ubuntu, though, is that if you improve
debian.org instead, then any improvements should flow through Ubuntu
to Trisquel too.

> > The mentioning of non-free firmware files is even more awkward - if a
> > system doesn't work correctly without them and they do exist, should
> > the installer really hide that fact?
> 
> One could look at it another way: if a system contains hardware whose 
> manufacturer doesn't respect users' freedoms, should the installer 
> encourage users to install freedom-denying firmware?

No, which is why debian-installer doesn't encourage it.  As far as I
saw, it simply states "Some of your hardware needs non-free firmware
files to operate. The firmware can be loaded from removable media,
such as a USB stick or floppy."

That's a fact and I don't see who it would help to conceal it.  At best,
concealing it would prevent someone using the free software until they
can get replacement hardware, but more likely they'd dismiss the free
software as broken for not supporting their hardware.

What's Trisquel's message in that situation?  It looks like the
installer may be in a binary blob in the git repository, which is a
bit hard to check.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/