Re: GNU (was Re: Decentralized reliable instant messaging?)

[Cindy-Sue Causey <butterflybytes@gmail.com>]

On 9/8/16, Thomas Schmitt <scdbackup@gmx.net> wrote:
>
> If GNU can get people into using GNU software without giving up its
> core values, then it normally does.
> E.g. there is absolutely no ban on offering GNU software for proprietary
> OSes.
>
> The FSF does not force GNU programs to fully follow the political goals
> of FSF. The programs shall, however, not work against those goals.
>   https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html
>
> Distributing, advising, or easing installation of non-free software
> is considered to be against the goals. On the other hand if GNU was
> still waiting for The Hurd to become a usable kernel, then we all would
> sit at M$ PCs and iMac polycarbonate sculptures.
> So the FSF as a compromise promotes GNU/Linuxes which are a bit more
> dogmatic than Debian:
>   https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html
>
> The criticism against Debian is in
>   https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.en.html
> Nevertheless there are several Debian people active in GNU packages.
>
> General reasoning for FSF positions is collected in
>   https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html


THANK YOU! Good, quick, cognitively friendly read. Nice to be able to
note the other recognizable, popular distros likewise highlighted by
GNU.

Am surely showing my ignorance by saying this, but the appearance is
their objection to some of Debian might be easily fixable..... Maybe.
It taking additional monies, related resources to maintain comes first
to mind.

? :)

A potential user objection I was reading into in the last couple days
here.. Things could be "worse" to that end (depending on one's
viewpoint) if Debian became more stringent in order to get off GNU's
gnaughty list page there.

This is timely since I'm now battling both wifi and Bluetooth so I
just minutes ago tripped over the firmware-iwlwifi package in the
process. It's readily available in spite of my one-liner
/etc/apt/sources.list file.

That's compared to my remembering feeling really guilty installing the
same when I still had to track it down for a fully manual install
outside of a larger, much busier sources.list file a couple years ago.
Maybe that wasn't for Debian, though, or maybe I'm forgetting some
minor, very important detail from then. *grin*

Cindy :)

-- 
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA

* runs with plastic sporks *