Chris Humphries wrote:
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | On (11/10/05 20:33), Nate Duehr wrote:| | Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 20:33:42 -0600| From: Nate Duehr <nate@natetech.com> | To: debian-user@lists.debian.org | Subject: Re: debian vs ubuntu and knoppix| | Steve Lamb wrote:| >Alvin Oga wrote: | >| >> - debian ... free ... | >> - ubuntu ... commercialized version of debian's "hard work"| >> which to me is wrong to do.. but oh well.. | > | > | > Uhhh, Alvin, you've been spreading a lot of disinformation on this list | >lately. I mean a LOT of disinformation. This is a prime example. From | >Ubuntu's front page, emphasis mine: | >| >Ubuntu will always be ***free of charge***, and there is no extra fee for | >the | >"enterprise edition", we make our very best work available to everyone on | >the| >same ***Free terms***.| | This sentence from their About Ubuntu page seems to indicate that they | see themselves as a commercial distribution, however: | | "Ubuntu is Free Software, and available to you free of charge. It's also | Free in the sense of giving you rights of Software Freedom, but you | probably knew that already! Unlike many of the other commercial | distributions in the free and open source world (Libranet, Lindows, | Xandros, Red Hat) the Ubuntu team really does believe that Free software | should be free of software licencing charges." | | Actually, they have three repositories, "main", "restricted" and | "universal", and different licensing for each. Some of Ubuntu is | definitely not Free Software. |Because different packages have different licenses, yet are in the repository. Please try to not blow this out of what it is. Ubuntu is free. Just like Debian is not every package in the opensource world,neither is Ubuntu. Try to be at least fair and read what you are reading instead of searching for something to try to draw a point that only exists inyour mind.
The whole debate is YAWN, but you seem very agitated about it, so I'll reply. Debian was created to create a 100% DSFG Free Software distro. This is fact. Read the charter.
Debian has struggled with non-Free drivers and such over the years... i.e. the "non-free" tree. Also fact.
Ubuntu basically copied Debian's lead by allowing for non-free "stuff". Also fact. They probably allow more questionable stuff than Debian does. Hard to quantify unless I feel like going through all of their packages, but why bother? They state it right on their website.
So what's supposedly in my head? I'm not blowing anything up -- I'm just reporting how it is in the Free Software world these days, and probably always will be, because hardware manufacturers are morons who think keeping the API to talk to their commodity hardware keeps them safe, somehow. The economic reality is that the only thing that keeps them safe is continuous innovation, or closing their code so they control who uses their hardware until someone reverse-engineers the interface or begs for an NDA.
Both distros struggle with software that's simply not truly Free. Ubuntu has the goal of "just making stuff work, even if we have to sign an NDA", Debian has the goal of "making stuff work with as little non-Free code as possible." Just different philosophies.
So really Ubuntu is just Debian repackaged with big money behind it, and people not as willing to stand up for something as they want their hardware to work. YAWN. Been there, done that, it's called Redhat.
People get paid to work on Ubuntu, and Debian gets some of the benefit. That's fine. Debian's still the underlying foundation, and Ubuntu are just a bunch of copycats -- which is perfectly FINE in the Free Software world. It's just retarded. They could have helped Debian with that money, but Shuttleworth wanted new spin and new marketing... AND wanted to have closed drivers so more hardware would work. Whatever. His choice. He's the beeeezillionaire.
As I said before, I am simply not interested in a flamefest about it, because it simply doesn't matter. Debian will continue to build DSFG-Free software and that's why some of us use it... without using "non-free" in our sources.list. Ubuntu can also be configured that way for those who are paying any attention at all to the software licenses of the software they're using. But anyone not paying attention in Ubuntu might be using non-free stuff, and not know it.
Nate