Re: [gNewSense-users] gNewSense's 'afio' is non-free?

[Ali Gunduz]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 10:34 PM, Ted Smith wrote:
> That post seems more like anti-freedom ranting than something that was
> in a spirit of actual help.

I don't know if we read the same article, but the author goes on great
length to explain the licensing background of a piece of software that
is included in gNewSense. I'd wish he directly contacted the gNewSense
community, but not doing so certainly does not make him
"anti-freedom".

I disagree with him on his general view that freedom oriented
derivatives of popular distributions are useless or that the nonfree
firmware issue is a religious war (i.e. an argument where both sides
are evenly well supported and decisions are ultimately based on
personal tastes).

However, in the end, his contribution to free software by showing a
bug present in most free distros and a possible flaw in Free Software
Directory's screening process far outweighs his negative comments.

> It isn't even clear if that original license is still valid

And this exact lack of clarity by itself disqualifies a program from
being included in a GNU/Linux distribution that is committed to
defending users' freedom.

> If Mr. Callaway thinks we don't have enough auditing, he's welcome to
> help, I'm sure. Did he notify any of these distributions when he found
> afio, or did he just write a snarky blog post about it?

I wouldn't qualify his blog post as a proper bug report but it is
certainly a positive action. (And he seems to be active in the Fedora
community in fuzzy licensing issues.) I hope he could find time and
motivation to help us identify more packages with questionable
licensing.

Ali Gündüz