Re: Free Software criteria -- about "Software distributions"

[Davi Leal]

MJ Ray wrote:
> Davi Leal wrote:
> > Proposed improvemnet:
> >
> >  "For software distributions, they must not include any non-free software
> > (eg the firmware BLOBs in Linux), or provide easy access to Non-Free
> > Software, even if the default is all Free Software."

The above is already a old proposal. Right now the text at the webapp reads:

  "For software distributions,  they must not include any
   Non-Free Software or __work to__ provide easy access to
   Non-Free Software, even if the default is all Free Software."

> Proposed change: replace "provide easy access to" with "automatically
> install", else nothing that downloads files is a Free Software
> distribution.  For example, OpenBSD provides easy access to Non-Free
> Software, so should be Non-Free.

Yes, I have removed
       "provide easy access to"
and replaced it with
       "__work to__ provide easy access to"

That is to say, there is an aim to make the installation of non-free software 
easier, and such organization/distribution work actively to get such goal.

I personally think that "automatically install" is very very soft.

I would like to know the RMS' rationale.


> Note also that Debian GNU/Hurd should be a Free Software Distribution,
> even if Debian GNU/Linux is not yet.

I do not know the details about "Debian GNU/Hurd". If so, we could tag as 
follows:

  "Debian"            as Non-Free

  "Debian GNU/Hurd"   as Free

  "Debian GNU/Linux"  as Non-Free


Note "Debian" is a more general term, which is used to refer to:
  "Debian GNU/Linux", "Debian GNU/Hurd", etc.
so it is not all 100% Free Software.


> I'm not sure of the status of the NetBSD and kFreeBSD flavours and
> I've not checked this in detail. 

We have already checked that FreeBSD and NetBSD distribution has BLOBs in its 
kernels, but we do not know yet if all such BLOBs are non-free software.


Klaus an me will work on the webapp interface to manage the classification 
of 'Pending-to-classify' skills, which will allow keep the rationale too.  
That will be good at hard to classify cases as the FreeBSD and NetBSD ones.

We are yet defining the functionality to develop.



Let us discuss it slowly to get the final rationale. I could personally be 
mistaken.

Davi