Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Why I won't promote Debian as a free software distribution

[MJ Ray]

Simon Ward <address@hidden>
> Trying to keep the thread of opinion on whether Debian should be
> promoted as a free software distribution separate from discussion of the
> guidelines…

This thread may need to be parked up until the FSF-collab provides its
list of things which are problems.

> If someone were to come to me and ask what would be a good choice for a
> free software distribution, with their primary aim to run all free
> software, I feel would be it would be dishonest of me to promote Debian
> as that choice without mentioning the caveats: some parts of the system
> and its documentation suggest using non‐free software, and the Debian
> Project provides non‐free software, so if you want an entirely free
> Debian‐based system you may have to take care to avoid the non‐free
> software.

I'd still love to know which parts of the system and its documentation
suggest using non‐free software, excluding bugs like the
policy-violating example given recently.

The project does not provide any non-free software itself, but some
Debian Project members package some.  Even the packaging of non-free
software is done with free software, as far as I know.

The need to take care is perpetual.  We've seen FSF-blessed free
system distributions include nvidia's very non-free drivers in the
past, after all.

    "But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance
    by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the
    price if you wish to secure the blessing." (Andrew Jackson, 1837).

> “Take care” could mean reading the documentation properly, rather than
> skimming over it, and noting that it talks about non‐free software
> (assuming it mentions that it is non‐free in the first place). If using
> a graphical package manager such as Synaptic, watch your accidental
> clicks in the configuration dialog or you may find you have enabled the
> non-free repository. These problems may seem trivial, but for a system
> that does not have this caveat, these problems will not exist.

Indeed, the problem of being able to enable a non-free source in an
optional package manager won't exist, but there are usually two
different and worse problems: the problems of non-free software and
details of which widespread software is non-free are not described
anywhere by the distribution's developers; leading some users to use
some nasty third-party click-to-install system that does not care
about either their freedom or system stabiliy.

Even though I would prefer the non-free repository to go elsewhere,
I can accept that it was not created lightly or for silly reasons.

But anyway - is anyone else here watching fsf-collab?

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/