Re: [gNewSense-users] newcomer's greetings

[Yavor Doganov]

Tryggvi Björgvinsson wrote:
> 
> IIRC, Stallman used proprietary UNIX in the beginning in order to be
> able to work on GNU and then switch as soon as he had a working
> operating system. In that my opinion is that one should be able to
> use proprietary software when free alternatives aren't available.

Please don't use this as an excuse; it is nowhere near to the
situation we have now.  RMS (and others) used Unix as a foundation in
order to develop GNU by writing components, one by one.  It was the
only way.  To put it in other words, those early freedom fighters used
prison's tools to provide an escape from the prison for all of us.

Now that we have entirely free operating system we are lucky that
we're not forced to use unethical software.  Of course, many features
are not available, and that will be the case for some years to come.

For example, a few years ago there were no free audio/video streaming
programs so instead of using proprietary software that facilitated
that job, we just didn't use such software, we used to say "Those
things can only be done with non-free software, so that's not an
option".  Today, we have the same situation with Flash and proprietary
drivers (and other stuff, of course).  We just reject to use them,
this is the only way.

Using the nVidious drivers or Adobe's Flash plugin won't lead to
freedom, quite on the contrary, so people who justify using non-free
software either don't value their freedom or just use it as an excuse
to keep their conscience clear (or both).