I shall clarify that there is a typo in my original message. The
correct sentence should read:
"I hope that the Debian project will not lose its unique
character with freedom and ethics at its core."
Thank you All for your work that helps many around the world.
Best wishes,
Wojciech
On 18/5/22 11:01, Wojciech Lipinski
wrote:
Dear
Debian Project Team,
I hope you are well. I have been using Debian GNU /Linux since
early 2000s, and found this project very helpful and inspiring
for my own work in a non-IT area. Currently, Debian GNU/Linux 11
is the only operating system on my computers. It has also been
adopted by some of my students. I have used the advanced expert
installation mode, and my system is relatively highly
customized. I found the Debian Installer shipped with version
11.3 very helpful to quickly ad conveniently set up the system.
I have noticed that various companies have been promoted on the
Debian website in exchange for their donations. It is great that
the Debian Project can secure important financial support and
promote free software among companies. However, I have also felt
that some promotion using very large logos of companies that do
not share many of the free software values may go a bit too far,
beside directly offering links to log into their web services.
To avoid any misunderstanding, I want to say that it is great to
engage corporations to support and participate in free software
projects as long as the free software and ethical values and
their adoption are amplified rather than distorted. I hope that
the Debian project will lose its unique character with freedom
and ethics at its core. I personally have used some academic
services by companies such as Google Scholar. I wish
non-corporate platforms for aggregating academic outputs and its
metrics could be adopted in the future. I feel ORCID is a step
into that direction, but I do not quite follow ORCID's ownership
and corporate policies, and they do not aggregate citation
metrics (yet).
Personally, I am considering applying to join your project to
help with Debian activities related to development and
scientific computing using Modern Fortran based on my background
in engineering sciences.
Best wishes,
Wojciech Lipiński
Canberra, Australia
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5478-6887