On Fri, Apr 04, 2008 at 11:42:47AM -0400, Hal Vaughan wrote: > On Friday 04 April 2008, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 04, 2008 at 10:04:46AM +0200, Ivan Savcic wrote: > > > AFAIK, RMS considers only one distribution to be really and truly > > > free -- it's the Gentoo based Ututo[1]. He talked about this in his > > > talk he held in Belgrade, Serbia. > > > > I have a problem with this. Debian, in it's default install is almost > > assuredly GNU free. And it has the additional freedom of allowing the > > user to choose to use non-free software within the structure of it's > > packaging system. IMO that is more free than preventing people from > > using the software they want. > > > > .02 > > Another interesting note, from the same RMS talk. Someone pointed out > that people had the freedom to choose so they should be able to choose > non-free if they want. His response? A person never has the choice to > be a slave. yeah, this is where RMS loses me. Don't get me wrong, I have immense respect for him and the work he does. But these kinds of statements are really difficult. I mean, I can think for a while and get what he's saying (I think): if a person is in a position where the only choice is to become a slave then they have not actually chosen to be a slave, but have merely been forced into it somehow. I guess an example of this in computing would be if I chose to use 3-d rendering on my system. Since I have an nvidia card then I currently have two choices (assuming I don't have the $ to go buy a new card): 1) choose to use the nvidia proprietary drivers or 2) choose to not use 3-d rendering. So in reality, I don't have choice and my decision is forced, hence, no freedom. And in that case I can agree with what he says (though he should spend more time trying to explain what he means instead of just hanging these things out there...). But what about a situation where there is a choice between multiple open and closed source software packages that each do the job well? What if the particular feature set I want is implemented in a particular way that I prefer by the closed source option? (or even, I just arbitrarily choose the closed source one for no real reason) In that case I am not forced to choose the closed source option, it merely happens to be the one I choose. I could just as validly choose the open source one and contirbute to the project in such a way that it suits my preference better (and that is, FTR, what *I* would choose). But that is not a case of "slavery" as there are many options available to me, I merely have chosen one that he doesn't agree with. That's not a slavery situation. But I also agree that this is a fairly contrived example. more .02 A
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