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Re: Anton's amendment



Yavor Doganov <yavor@doganov.org> writes:

> If we had the right to remove the GNU Manifesto, the Free Software
> Movement would slowly lose its influence.  People, especially young
> people, tend to forget how this started and what ideals the movement
> follows and why they are important.

This is a stock RMS talking point that many of the rest of us don't agree
with, including some of us who are fairly political about free software
(not everyone in Debian is).  I think he's being far, far too paranoid,
and I doubt that the GNU Manifesto in the manuals is anywhere near the
most effective way that he has of reaching people.  In fact, I'm fairly
sure that his current policy is actually counter-productive, since this
inexplicable support of (IMO) badly worded, non-free licenses drives away
people like me who are otherwise members and supporters of the FSF and who
would otherwise be lauding the FSF through word of mouth.  And I guarantee
you that, at least *now*, far more people learn about the origins of free
software and the importance of those ideals through word of mouth than
some appendix to some manual that few people read cover-to-cover.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>



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