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FSF-Sponsored gNewSense 2.1 Released
An anonymous reader writes "gNewSense, the fully-free GNU/Linux distribution sponsored by the FSF, has released a 2.1 live CD (torrent). Since the last release, more non-free binary blobs have been removed, new artwork has been added and lots of other improvements have been made. It's also two years since the first edition of gNewSense, and in that time an impressive ten live CDs have been released! gNewSense 2.1 DeltaH is based on Ubuntu Hardy, and removes non-free software that other distributions don't." I wonder if gNewSense can be easily installed on an OLPC XO the way several other distros can.
Who is this supposed to be a nuisance to?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Can I buy any old machine from Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. that works with Ubuntu, and expect it to work fully (graphics, sound, wireless, etc.) with GNewSense?
If so, it would be a philosophically refreshing way of computing. Otherwise, pile it on the list of OS cruft that doesn't work.
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
well hell, sign me up!
who cares if it sucks as long as it's pretty!
Probably to all the users who have to deal with G or GNU prepended to every program name.
gNewSense is a good start towards giving the users FREEdom with an entirely FREE operating system. Binary blobs are bad. Those that are willing to sacrifice source code for working drivers deserve neither.
But I'm concerned it doesn't go far enough. Even if the distro doesn't include non-FREE software in the repositories, users can still download and use it. Perhaps the OS should include a whitelist of hashes for all FREE software and only allow it to be run -- non-FREE software would terminate (SIGNOTFREE?). Or maybe a better approach would be to only execute binaries which have been encrypted/signed by the FSF, so we know it's FREE software.
I think that would ensure FREEdom.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Bad name, no "wow" factor (like OS X or even Ubuntu (Windows has no "wow" to it IMO, it has a bureaucratic feel to it)), it appears to have no marketing (why do this if you're not actively bringing it to people? And don't give me the "diversity" speech, a scaled down version of ubuntu, of which there are already too many to count, does nothing to increase diversity (again IMO; stating an opinion; could be, and likely is, wrong; etc))
I see no pros, only cons, someone enlighten me
There are already hundreds (thousands?) of Linux distros. But apparently all of them have licensing terms that are Evil, so we need one another one.
Or do we? Each existing distro has some kind of user community, and presumably those users have some reason for preferring that particular distro. Are they going to abandon their current distro and and switch to this one, just because it meets the FSF's arcane political requirements? And if your distro doesn't have a user community, why bother creating it?
I really, truly believe that "Free Software(tm)", "Agile Methodology," or "Ruby on Rails" are all forms of the religion "virus" that infect brains with creator stories, only dressed up in a nice, geek friendly suit.
- Linux heavy blogs are forms of church.
- Closed source printer drivers are the original sin.
- RMS is the prophet who will save us from our sins
- OLPC is the nerd equivalent of a missionary spreading the gospel of Free Software to the heathens in "3rd world countries"
- Microsoft is the devil.
Want more?
- Catholicism and other religions are heavy on using guilt. Guilt usually is the result of doing something pleasurable.
- In the GNU religion, guilt comes from taking pleasure in using "non-free software".
- It is honorable to suffer in the quest towards enlightenment.
- Gnusense requires suffering because most things do not work. Thus, you suffer and become a true member of the GNU religion.
- You can cleanse yourself of this guilt and prove yourself by abstaining from non-free software.
- BSD, Creative Commons licenses, and other licenses are geek versions of The Koran, Buddhist literature, or the Tanakh. These documents go against god (RMS)'s word and those who use them should have their Code assimilated by the GPL.
I could go on, but I'm kinda serious. It is scary how close the GNU/GPL/FSF thing parallels major religions. The methods used by the brain virus (think a genetic virus, only the meme version) operate on the same kinds of "Sin" and "Pain/Suffering/Pleasure" emotions the old-school religions like Catholicism did.
GNUsense is just the beginning of modern tech-religions. It won't be long before the Futurama's "Church of Star Wars" comes true. Or perhaps followers of the GNU faith will become reckless like the Star Trek nerds in Futurama did and we'll have to send RMS and crew to a remote planet inhabited by floating clouds of Slashdot nerd dust who make him do tricks.
And why didn't the author make an effort with a couple of words in the article summary?
myselfmusic
Microsoft?
No thanks. I'll stick to distros that make it easy to use Nvidia binary drivers rather than pushing their political agendas.
I prefer open source over proprietary drivers but will continue to use the ones that best fit my needs.
The two biggest reasons why Ubuntu came into being in the first place were:
1. Releases not happening fast enough
2. A dogmatic belief that abstaining from using proprietary software will cause the development of free replacements.
The solution to the first was to insist on a 6 month release schedule. The solution to the second was to put forward the policy that the best of all alternatives will be chosen, so if you want the free alternative to win, make it better than the proprietary alternative.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So, what the FSF has done here is take Ubuntu and delete some drivers (and other files), right? Effectively, this will narrow the hardware compatibility of this distro, and the idea is that this will encourage people to buy hardware for which Free Drivers are available, right?
Well, how the hell am I supposed to do that if I don't know know what hardware that is? Trial and error? Come on, FSF, go the extra mile here.
So linux is not free enough for you?
I don't know what kind of person would use this distribution, but I would not want to sit next to them on a cross country bus trip.
I read somewhere that they even removed GLX- which basically represents linux's only sane graphical development. That is just sad.
Don't get me wrong- I love opensource technologies, but let's face it... part of what makes linux awesome is the fact that it's generally supported by some important commercial things like adobe flash and nvidia (for its drivers) and such- and how about mplayer? I am more in the "screw licenses" boat than the "boycott anything without gnu written on it" raft.
I use Gnewsense as my home desktop. I have been happy with it. Really it is just Ubuntu with the binary blobs ripped out. When I have a problem with something, I search the web for with the error message and Ubuntu instead of Gnewsense, since there are more Ubuntu users.
If this is something that some people want, then that's great, more power to them. But I'm left with a lot of misgivings:
Find free books.
Real Slashdotters have a full mirror of English Wikipedia in their brain, updated daily, just in case.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Who is this supposed to be a nuisance to?
It's a reference to RMS (or his PGP^H^H^HGPG key):
"The name originated as Gnusiance as a reference to RMS's GPG key, but was later changed to gNewSense by bbrazil and ompaul to also capture the New Sense of the distribution and as a pun on GNU."
http://www.gnewsense.org/index.php?n=FAQ.FAQ#toc4
Complete freedom, and the restrictions that it brings isn't for everyone, including myself - but why go all aggressive on those who it does appeal to?
I'm perfectly fine with Ubuntu, as are quite a few others. As the numbers increase, so will the chance of greater hardware-support - both open and closed, I reckon.
Choice. Such a wonderful thing.
And if it's supposed to be pronounced the same way GNU is it's pronounced "Guh-new-sense" which sounds like "Guh-nuisance"
I know it's unfair to expect FOSS programmers to be marketing experts, but it really shouldn't take any imagination to see what a terrible name this is, and how much names matter.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Presumably to the manufacturers of hardware which contains binary-only drivers.
The idea is that it's a deliberately stress-testing distribution designed to be 100% Free and to cause any hardware which isn't Free to fail. If nobody complains that broken stuff is broken, it won't get fixed. And requiring binary drivers *is* breakage. As soon as the kernel updates, potentially wham! go your drivers if there's no source code.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Seriously. Who cares?
The point of GNewSense is to find places where Free Software isn't adequate to have a fully functioning system without binary blobs. If you're a business user [other than a hardware integrator, in which case your tech team might be using it to test your hardware's compatibility in a purely non-proprietary context], a non-FSF-fanatic home user, or otherwise someone in any way marketing-sensitive, you probably don't want to be running a distribution optimized for idiological purity over compatibility and convenience; as such, it's not meant for you. (Business users care about redistributability, of course, but a great many of the relevant binary blobs have that property anyhow. An embedded distribution built for license purity would be interesting to a great many people... but a good number of those users are liable to be skittish about the GPL as well, making their goals and the FSF's align considerably differently -- and Linux-centric embedded-system build toolkits generally already have license-management functionality anyhow).
Given that goal and context, why does the marketing matter?
it's ironic that the ideaology behind removing binary drivers is an attack on peoples freedoms - the freedom to develop and release software and hardware under the license that suits you. it's always seemed to me that RMS isn't about freedom, just his own twisted version of it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
This is my third post to this thread and hopefully I'll shut up about this GNU=Religion thing but again if you view...
I know it's unfair to expect FOSS programmers to be marketing experts, but it really shouldn't take any imagination to see what a terrible name this is, and how much names matter.
... through the lens of religion not marketing it makes sense. Being a true beliver in any kind of growing religion requires you think against the grain (and often common sense) in order to prove your worth.
If you take the idea that most "GNU Geeks" see "marketdriods" as pretty much the devil, it makes sense that they named it this. After all, says the "GNU Geek", "Marketing is stupid and anybody worthy of this operating system will not care what the name of it is, so we'll name it something geeky (GNU-newspeak for stupid) to sift out the non-believers".
The reason this stuff works is that if forces the follower of the religion to go against common sense. Most christians on some level know "heaven/hell" is probably not fact. Most GNU followers know marking serves a place, and it works even on them. But the act of forcing their concious mind to rebel against the urges (and common sense) provided by their sub-conscious causes suffering, which they rationalize as "I'm proving my worth".
Hell, GNU wouldn't be able to market itself as a religion if they tried doing anything at all that resembles marketing. The fact that this brain virus makes its host have to force their brain to counteract reality is what makes it, just like other religions, so effective.
I don't know if you meant to misspell "ideology", but somehow "idiology" seems like a more appropriate spelling in this context anyway...
Only the FSF would remove functionality and consider that to be a feature rather than a bug...
so what's with RMS's PGP key?
Or humor - it could be humor.
Your thing was good too.
Don't use a PC with a proprietary BIOS.
Try find anything that meets that at all.
These days all non-trivial chipsets and devices (mouse, monitor, graphics card, disk drives etc) have proprietary firmware built into them and are designed with some sort of HDL (essentially software). If you really want free computing then you should insist on those being free too.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
GNU isn't a religion, it's a political-economic ideology reminiscent of anarcho-communism.
Marketing, being a politically correct word for propaganda, which is in its essence about domination of the individual through psychology, well, it's antithetical to the values of an anarcho-communist.
For these people, being able to achieve success without resorting to marketing and economic trickery is a validation of the viability of their world-view.
Do you refer to imperial-capitalist-pig-dog as a religion too?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
It's a nuisance to developers that otherwise might use non-free software. It's supposed to make sure that free software developers' (that choose to use gNewSense) itches don't get scratched by Flash and binary-only drivers.
MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
I have to ask.
gNewSense is useless. What is important is the list of hardware that works on gNewSense. And the fact that everybody knows that everybody knows where this list is. ------ Given the above, hardware vendors would be motivated to support FOSS
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
As a philosophical matter, this proves you can make a fully functional, fully featured distro without even one bit of proprietary software.
As a practical matter, if you try this distro and find you can do everything you care to do, except 'n' percent, then you know that you only depend on proprietary software for '100-n' percent. As 'n' approaches zero, Microsoft and its ilk become ever less important to the world.
Blah Blah Blah... This is silly, if you want Ubuntu, use {,k,x}ubuntu - this more politics than interesting...
This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Who is this supposed to be a nuisance to?
Everyone who is expecting it to be as easy to deal with as Ubuntu.
Like freedom itself, it requires constant attention. It is never really achieved, however if you fail to try, you will certainly get the default configuration, which is slavery. I think it is good that some people like RMS and many others pay attention to this. Compromise in practice is inevitable, but compromising the goal is not. I have nothing belonging to others to hide, so I hide it very well.
being a politically correct word for propaganda
And what is newspeak like "Free as in Freedom" besides propaganda and the delibrate distortion of english? What is GPLv3 but a twisted form of self-inflicting DRM wrapped in nice sounding words like "Freedom"?
I see propaganda cranked out by the Disciples of GNU that would make George Orwell roll over in his grave.
on the MIT public keyserver
sig 135EA668 Richard Stallman (Chief GNUisance)
http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0x894A158D
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
>OLPC is the nerd equivalent of a missionary >spreading the gospel of Free Software to the >heathens in "3rd world countries"
Did you miss that whole episode where they decided that they wouldnt be spreading the free software gospel and the vrious heads and security guys who quit the project?
St Nicholas has lost the free software faith.
In return, many of his followers have lost faith in him.
Not everything is meant for the "OMG!1 lolz it sounds lik nuisance so it must be bad! lol" crowd.
Some people are actually capable of evaluating a product based on its merits. GNU software is aimed at those people.
One very serious point to being "free" is that, if you are serious about security, you want as much of your software to be available for security audit as possible
You mean like the Debian OpenSSL patches, the community audited wide open security hole for mor than 1 1/2 years?
Communities where maintainers know each other by nothing else than email can easily be infiltrated by "hostile" talent. They offer high quality contributions, seem to spend very much time discussion patches with much professionalism and politeness. In the end it might be just the made up personality Jon Doe of some organization X waiting to place just this one unsuspicious line within the code.
When using commercial code, organization X needs much more than a diligent virtual personality but direct access to the corporate infrastructure.
RMS considers himself the chief gnuisance (g is not silent) and the name of this distro is a reference to that. He told me himself during the recent GNU Zealand Tour.
Hallelujah brother!
Not everything is meant for the "OMG!1 lolz it sounds lik nuisance so it must be bad! lol" crowd.
Oh please, your "lolz I r can ev4luate software based on itz meritz!!11" crowd is so immature, because I put immature words in your mouth.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
It's not really a completely free distro, as they allow documentation that uses the GFDL license with invariant sections. Many (including Debian) consider that to be a non-free license, and do not allow it.
Religion is important to many people and they believe it to be good.
Software freedom is important to many people and they believe it to be good.
Do you really expect the two to be so different? Are you so blind as not to realize that there are LOTS of other things that are important to large numbers of people? Things they devote themselves to? And right after the Olympics, no less, with all the stories of what the athletes in so many different sports did to compete...
Also, that's some pretty crazy trolling to suppose that RMS "died" for us (when? how?) given that he's alive and atheist.
To suppose that having things you care about is a "brain virus" is absurd in the extreme.
I counter that no one could seriously believe that crap except a paranoid Slashdot nerd who has nothing that's important to them.
"The idea is that it's a deliberately stress-testing distribution designed to be 100% Free and to cause any hardware which isn't Free to fail."
What, you mean like Debian? Seriously, Debian, an all-free OS is added to by the Ubuntu team, who put in binary stuff to "fill it out". Then, the FSF take Ubuntu and take all the binary stuff out to make it all-free.
Am I the only one seeing the stupidity here?
I hate printers.
hot damn you're fucking nutso
Yes, the name makes GNoSense.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Yea, imagine this as a tagline, "removes non-free software that other distributions don't." I can see people lining up for that feature, NOT.
It is a question of what is more important to you: 100% hardware support or freedom.
What about the freedom to have 100% hardware support?
While Debian (main) is 100% free, there are considered-useful packages that are very commonly distributed with Debian that are non-free.
http://nonfree.alioth.debian.org/
http://www.debian.org/social_contract
"We will support people who create or use both free and non-free works on Debian. We will never make the system require the use of a non-free component.... We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of works that do not conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We have created "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our archive for these works. The packages in these areas are not part of the Debian system, although they have been configured for use with Debian."
The reason the FSF (and RMS) won't promote Debian is because of the non-free components that are in the most common standard installations of Debian.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
It's GNU/Program Name, you insensitive clod!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I reckon it's in the same vein as the Virtual Richard M Stallman package in Debian, that nags you if you have non-free packages and tries to explain why they're bad :)
Not every change made in Ubuntu is non-free/binary.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Huh? how is "free as in freedom" either newspeak or a distortion of English? In English, free can mean freedom or no cost. There happens to be confusion because the software is usually available at no cost. The phrase simply disambiguates.
So, what term would you use?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If gNewSense was a fork of Debian (whose full name is "Debian GNU/Linux" btw), we'd have heard about it by now, especially given that Debian is more "Free as in Speech" than "Open Source" (hence closer to rms philosophically than most distros). Who knows, maybe he (rms) is just trying to attach the popularity of Ubuntu to his philosophy... but do you really need a fork for that?
$ make available
You're using IE to browse /.? You must be new here.
$ make available
No -- just all those Linux distros that refuse to be called GNU/Linux. I'm afraid the FSF are well and truly closing that barn door...
John_Chalisque
In practice, I'm having a really hard time believing that this is going to work. Customer: "I'm calling to complain that your driver doesn't work on my computer, because it isn't open source." Tech support guy: "What version of Windows are you running?" Customer: "I'm not running Windows, I'm running gNewSense." Tech support guy: "I'm sorry, we don't support gNewSense." Customer: "It's a version of Linux. Your web site says you support Linux." Tech: "Oh, Linux, cool. Yeah, we support Linux. I run Ubuntu at home myself. Yeah, it took a long time, but the higher-ups finally decided to support Linux. I can get you going, no sweat. Actually I'm surprised you had a problem at all. Our driver is in the mainline kernel and everything." Customer: "Ha, I know about your filthy driver. It has seventy-five bytes of hexadecimal in the source code that gets loaded into registers, and nobody knows what those 75 bytes do! It's unclean -- evil and unclean, I tell you! That's why I run gNewSense, which is purified of your nasty driver and with its insufficient level of freedom! Now please connect me with your CEO so I can show him the error of his ways!"
Might be a lot more effective to apply economic pressure by spreading the word about which hardware to buy that has good OSS driver support, rather than installing an entire distro designed to break your computer on the theory that breaking your own computer will make the manufacturer suffer.
Find free books.
did the FSF authorized you to have children?
You're using IE to browse /.??????????????????? You must be new here.
There, fixed that for me.
$ make available
These *are* the same people who brought us The GIMP, after all, and thought that its name was (and still is) perfectly acceptable.
That, and the fact that the developers still insist that (all) the users simply aren't "fully appreciating" the UI.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Nvidia owners.
wooooooooosh
"free as in freedom" is a distortion because it is still ambiguous what perspective the freedom comes from.
My baseline interpretation of freedom with regards to open source development is that BSD/MIT is vastly more "free" than GNU. And understanding this, I recognize that you may think the opposite.
If nobody complains it might also mean that there's nobody using the distribution. Really I can't see gNewSense as anything more than a hobbyist exercise to see what you can put together without closed-source software. Requiring every single hardware company in the world to provide open-source drivers and maintain them against your wantonly changing kernel is ridiculous even if you ignore the IP issues - the first step if you want hardware vendors' support is to provide a stable API and ABI so they consider your platform a well-established contender rather than a tech demo.
That's the irony isn't it? The software is 100% CommieLeft, so it's a nuisance to the Free World.
To me this feels just lame. It's a bit like the dream of the programming language that will forbid programmers to create bad code. "Oh, Debian is baaad, dude, it ALLOWS people to install proprietary filthy bits if that even crosses their minds. Let's do this new distro that kinda certifies every little file in the HD and if it meets something different from fully 100% GPL compatible, it just goes BOOM, explodes the box!!" People must CHOOSE to have free software all the time, they must do so KNOWINGLY. They must be FACED with the alternative all the time, must be tempted by the devil all the time. That is how we go on with our lives. Yes, it is difficult. The idea that we need a new "pure" distro instead of Debian (or many others) is ludicrous to me. People should just LEARN about howto use APT, and understand how that affect their lives, instead of look for a distro that "handle all that" for you, and send you to user heaven when you die without hassels. This is a proposal to create alienated users, just like the dark side already does. It's playing by hteir rules. I've seen a lot of this in other contexts, it happens sooner or later. Programming languages, like distros, are TOOLS. When weput limits to them, you are making a sin. That is the sin the proprietary world do all the time... Tools are extensions to our bodis andsouls, and by limiting them, thei are crippling us. This distro is a limited distro. It was born from an idea of limiting what can (or should) be done. This PRINCIPLE is wrong, and should not be followed. How much time before people get this and subvert it, find ways to install this or that proprietary thing? It will be sort of a "pirated" gNewSense, with probably an even worse name. So there will be them, the great "freedom fighters" who will "liberate" gNewSense for the people to use and finally do what they will, instead of strictly what the creators of the distro had in mind... A "people's" version of a "GPL" version of a "people's" version of Debian... Can't you SERIOUSLY not install Debian and NOT include the contrib and non-free sources (which are not default BTW) and then NOT install skype, or pirated windows binaries or pirated Mathematica or SNES ROMs or Leisure Suit Larry or whatever? Just do that, do NOT use proprietary, instead of asking for your big brother to watch over you. Perhaps they like the spirit of this in Venezuela, or other countries where Stallman has been going to a lot lately. I sure don't like it here in Brazil. But what do I know? I haven't tried many distros in my life. I only switched from FreeBSD to Debian after I asked RMS himself forsuggestions, and I liked it ever since. He did look a bit uncomphortable at the time by suggestingit, I believe he still didn't find it the perfect distro. I honestly hope hedoesn't find THIS the perfectone,and feels at least a bit uncomphortable by suggestig it too...
Nicolau Werneck - NIC1138
"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity" -- Thomas Huxley
This is not the only Linux distro that is free of proprietary software. The Fedora-based BLAG Linux (http://blagblagblag.org/) has been around for longer and is very serious about keeping binary blobs out of the kernel and non-open source code out of the repos.
The user base isn't huge but it's worth a look.
No, but I prefer things without stupid fucking names. The name doesn't make any sense, so if they're not going stoop to marketing, how about they give it a really simple, clear name that describes what it is.
This isn't anti-marketing, it's a retarded geek's idea of marketing, puns and all.
Previously there has been a Debian GNU/Linux but that was really named in gratitude to gnu and not actually a gnu project.
Finally the decade long silly LiGnuX arguement is over and congratulations to the FSF for understanding now what people expect you to do if you want to put your name on a software distribution.
Or maybe he realized getting anything trivial approved through Debian super-democratic process takes longer than electing an American president...
Marketing, being a politically correct word for propaganda
Until you provide a source I will take that as your opinion. Here is what I have seen as a definition of marketing:
"Marketing is the performance of activities that seek to accomplish an organization's objectives by anticipating customer or client needs and directing a flow of need-satisfying goods and services from producer to customer or client." (Essentials of Marketing 11th edition Perreault, Cannon, McCarthy)
So sure, you could use propaganda to achieve marketing but that is really a short-sited view of marketing in general.
For these people, being able to achieve success without resorting to marketing and economic trickery is a validation of the viability of their world-view.
How? Why? Why does marketing automatically equate to "economic trickery" in your opinion? And why does this imply that their "world-view" is viable?
In other words, let's suppose I build a product or provide a service, and I decide to have zero marketing. None, zip, nothing at all. The product or service has a name, but the name implies nothing of the product's nature. How successful would such a product be? Keep in mind that things like websites, showing the product to others, and simple things like that are forms of marketing. But what I have here is essentially a product in a vault and the only person that knows of the product's existence is myself. Such products do exist but do you honestly expect people to understand that it exists without any form of marketing?
Hell, let's get real. I had such a product, it was a customized user interface for a video game which I thought to be superior in some ways to other interfaces available. Initially I had no intention of releasing the interface or allowing others to use the customized interface. That meant zero marketing for my product and I was the only user. The entire population would not know that I was using the interface and therefore nobody except myself used the product.
Eventually I did "marketing" even though I wasn't aware that it was "marketing". My friends saw my using the interface and eventually wanted to use it as well. Later I posted a video intending to focus on my game-play (not the interface) and people watching the video wanted copies of the interface. Eventually I created a website for the interface (easier to distribute) and before I knew it, a significantly large portion of the players were download and using my interface while I slept. Each of these marketing elements contributed to expand the reach and use of the product. And I'll bet you that most of those people were thankful that they had access to it than to never have had access.
Sure, I never ran an ad, or tried to put out a video convincing people that my interface was superior or that they needed it. I simply did the bare minimum in marketing gestures on "promotion" and "place" (made the interface available, and it was free) and let the product sell itself. But that is still marketing.
I will give you that some forms of marketing such as advertising are not necessarily the greatest or most appreciated and are in fact annoying. But at some point, I am sure you have come across a product that you actually liked or wanted/needed and if it hadn't been for some type of marketing then you would have never known that that product or service existed.
In fact some of these products or services may not even have been from a for-profit mega corporation, but instead from a non-profit organization like a school. All organizations that want to serve a target audience will participate in some form of marketing if they want to be successful.
Aparently they don't know about gobuntu , wich is exactly the same as they are doing , namely a completely free distro.
Granted , maybe gNewSense existed before Gobuntu.
I'll check the date stamps
Slipping shoelaces ?
Don't Panic. When Web 9.0 arrives we'll all be on Cloud Nine.
You do not get it. The name happens to be pretty clever, and pretty good marketing too. Here's the thing: they're not marketing to you.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
I specifically choose ATI cards for my Linux boxen and ignore any on-board Nvidia graphics chip.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
You probably wouldn't know what a real communist was if Lenin rose from his tomb and bit you on your far side if your left ass cheek.
You wouldn't happen to work for SCO would you?
My definition of marketing is "the art of getting people to buy stuff they don't need".
Joking aside, marketing itself is close to outright deception. Any reasonably moral businessman would not only provide reasons why his product is better than the competition's, but let the customer know the shortcomings of his product. A moral person will give people all the information they need to make an informed decision. Anything else is essentially a lie by omission.
Actually Gnubuntu existed first (November 2005), but nothing more than an IRC channel and some artwork came of it. We started talking about gNewSense in May 2006 as a way to make Gnubuntu happen, with the first release 2 years ago today (August 25th 2006).
A quick check indicates that Gobuntu was first released July 10th 2007.
See https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2005-November/013261.html http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/130
Debian comes with non-free blobs. Taking the first Debian system to hand (Etch) and pulling the kernel source I see the very first file we remove is in there (drivers/atm/atmsar11.data) and many others. Ubuntu adds a few (and I believe is taking the kernel from kernel.org rather than Debian these days), but Debian is not all-free.
The GIMP developers are completely aware of the UI problems GIMP has, and GIMP 2.6 will be the first version where there will be obvious UI improvements.
Download GIMP 2.5.3 and see for yourself.
how is "free as in freedom" either newspeak or a distortion of English?
Requiring somebody to release their source code under the guise of "freedom" is newspeak. Let's say, I, as a developer write some software and give it to you, but just the binary. Let's say I let that you use, copy, and modify that software as you wish. In other words, you have natural freedoms to do as you please. Now RMS comes along as says "That's not freedom! you didn't give him the source!"
That's newspeak.
gNewScent = the terrible body odor from waterphobic GNU hippies
Huh? how is "free as in freedom" either newspeak or a distortion of English?
The concept is copped directly from Marx and Lenin. The idea is that one can't truly be "free" unless they are under a particular ideological system.
Starting a religion without any kind of marketing seems doomed to fail, IMHO
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I also wondered about Debian when I first heard about the FSF distribution. When RMS was here recently I found his complaint that there are "no completely Free distributions" a little confusing. Debian does include non-free packages, but it separates them into the non-free and contrib sections exactly so that people who want a completely Free installation can easily filter out the non-free components... and this is why I was surprised that RMS didn't just use that formula for his laptop. Although knowing how he reasons, it'd probably be enough for him to argue that Debian even associates itself with non-free software and makes it easy for people to install it if they need to, which the FSF might believe is bad for Free Software in the long term.
Even if the FSF wanted a completely free GNU distribution of its own, however, wouldn't it be easier to simply take Debian and simply strip out the non-free and contrib sections? Ultimately it should be as simple as not providing access to those packages in the repositories, since Debian's already declared that those packages will never be required for a complete working distribution. Why take a distro based on Debian which makes it more convoluted, then reverse it back to what Debian probably was in the first place?
gNewSense claims in its FAQ that Debian/Ubuntu aren't really free, but apart from saying so the FAQ doesn't really address this. I know the two have had their disagreements on licenses (notably the Debian team deciding that the GFDL isn't really Free). Is it something to do with this?
I'm sure there would be good reasons for doing this, and to be honest I don't even think it's necessary to have reason that convinces everyone in Free Software. As long as people are motivated to do it, good for them (and perhaps for everyone). If anyone could comment on this, though, I'd be interested to know more about what the reason is.
I like the way Gimp's UI works. I reckon it shits all over Photoshop - although i have to admit i haven't used that for about 10 years, so i'm probably talking out of my arse!
Free as in FREE with these shackles.
By the way I rolled a 20, so my 18th level psychiatrist decapitates the OT VIII mind ripper with his vorpal tongue of righteousness!
and now, on with our show...
It is my shallow, and darkly sarcastic, opinion that this is like a debate to determine whether medicine or Scientology is better suited to help suffering people.
Last time I checked there where plenty of Linux distributions that did not cost the end user anything more than time and/or Internet access fees to download, install and configure. (Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, and Fedora just to name a few.) If that is not free enough then I don't know what else to say.
When vendors start charging end users for video, audio, network drivers (binary blobs) I'll get a little more interested and active. Until then I'm more than happy to run thousands of computes on Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise, and SuSE Enterprise distro packages.
This rely is a nonissue at this point in time. While I applaud their efforts to provide free software, the truth is that for a majority of Linux users, this is just more background noise from the "distro war zone".
--magus
Sing it, brother.
They should have called it Gnubuntu.
And requiring binary drivers *is* breakage. As soon as the kernel updates, potentially wham! go your drivers if there's no source code.
The lack of a stable API is breakage as well, when subsystems are being rewritten left, right and center, and API/ABIs are changed drastically between point releases, it's no wonder the binary drivers break.
I can understand why the unstable API/ABI would be considered a "feature" of the Linux kernel, with that line of reasoning, providing source code to the community allows for drivers to be rewritten along with the everchanging API/ABIs.
It's a cheap trick though, you can't fault the binary drivers when they stop working due to the underlying API being rewritten. They didn't break because they're closed binaries, they were broken because the API/ABI was changed. And this happens fairly frequently, and it's intentional (the kernel devs like to tout the everchanging API as a feature).
The GNU crowd seems to think that such frequent breakage will compell manifacturers to open their drivers, and it might, in a few cases, but it's more likely that they simply won't bother supporting such a statistically insignificant niche that's full of headaches.
Not at all. Your argument is a strawman.
Free software, per its definition, gives the recipient four freedoms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software#Definition
Your scenario gives the recipient freedom #0 and freedom #2, but it does not give freedom #1 or freedom #3.
That is truth. Plainspeak.
The TCP/IP stack in Windows, and the core kernel of OSX (named Darwin) are both taken from BSD code, and now made closed and proprietary. People in general are not free to enjoy whatever improvements were made to the base code.
IBM invented the SMB protocol and released it under a liberal license, only to see Microsoft subsequently adopt it, obscure it and then proceed to charge people in general a fortune for it (via CALs).
GPL software, and other copyleft licenses, guarantee that the code will remain free, and not become usurped by proprietary interests. Copyleft ensure that rip-offs of code such as these examples and the charging of people for others' original work cannot happen.
Let me get this right. So Canonical (Ubuntu) takes Debian and extends it with proprietary drivers and software. Now gNewSense takes Ubuntu and removes the proprietary software again. Ok, seems to make sense, in a new way.. Seriously, who thought out this name?
I'm a bit tired, and I misread that as gNonSense...
"Marketing, being a politically correct word for propaganda, which is in its essence about domination of the individual through psychology, well, it's antithetical to the values of an anarcho-communist."
So sayeth the GNU zealot anarcho-communist propaganda, but GNU would be Gnowhere without the zealotry of its propagandists. That's not a bad thing, but let's not pretend that propaganda has not been key to Gnu adoption.
Propaganda need not be falsehood, BTW.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
What do you use to get the video from the YouTube URL? I wrote a program for that a while back, but YouTube changed, and now my program doesn't work anymore.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"gNewSense is based on Ubuntu but with all proprietary software and binary blobs removed."
No flash, no wlan, no gpu, no skype, etc I guess nothing will work and I cannot imagine anybody who wants that excepted a complete freetard.
If that qualifies as a religion, then so should the irrational belief that software is inferior if it is given away. Which is really just an order of the larger, consumerist religion that holds that if it's not advertised and requires money or theft to acquire, it's not worth having.
And yes, it's got all the rituals too.
-Guilt at finding serials and cracks for all of your software.
-Penance paid with a full reinstall every year to cleanse yourself of malware!
-Buying the holy Norton Relics to ward off evil.
and my favorite, instead of Confession we have Windows Genuine Advantage (TM)!
There are some religions that were created to benefit their followers. I would class FOSS software religion in that category. Others, like Scientology, were created only to benefit their founder. I liken each new Microsoft OS or Office suite to a step up the OT levels. Some people view them as a waste of money. Others are amazed at the dramatic difference in productivity they bring.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
With binary you are bound to the manufacturer. If he goes out of business or simple chooses not to support you any more you lost. Customers that for some reason need long term support for their hardware (more than two to three years) have good reasons to choose free software over closed source.
One example would be large customers that could pay for someone else to support them with open source. Another example would be myself. Some hardware I use is not supported in Windows XP (granted it is very little, but still), and most is not supported in Vista. Why should I need to buy new stuff even if my old stuff still works? Wireless network hardware is a huge issue. Encryption if often for some reason part of the driver. So with binary crap many older cards don't support WPA. In Linux they do, out of the box, as long as the hardware is supported.
So while your post is correct for some people, there are many very real and very pressing issues why open source matters to many customers. It's just that many customers are too dumb and get roped into dependencies (bread and butter for the it industry) on a single company.
All I am asking is not to make fun of savy customers who demand choice.
Should that not be GNU/gNewSense?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Because the normal people (not geek/technician/pc enthusiast) want a "just work" system, not a "purist one". He needs a system can play your music, films, do work and etc, and do not like messages "i do not play your film because the codec needed is closed and evil".
(and PLEASE, do NOT "use Mac" messages here. the idea is get a usable Linux, not go to someone else)
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
For the customer that is.
Freedom to choose who will support the apps in the future should there be any disagreement with the original developer. Some people try to educate the customers about that. From the developer perspective it looks quite different. They they it should be their right to lock in the customer with closed source.
As I am mainly a customer and not a developer it always seems that developers cry for freedom to choose closed source is only their twisted version of it. Well, as a customer I CHOOSE choice in support and avoid lock-ins. I choose free software over proprietary stuff.
Try to change perspective sometimes.
Free software, per its definition, gives the recipient four freedoms:
I wasn't aware that the FSF had the right to redefine phrases in natural English. They certainly have a definition of free software but I see no reason that the GP needs to adopt that definition as his own. RMS is not the ultimate authority on the meaning of words in the English language.
As a general supporter of the FSF's goals (in a practicality-oriented sort of way), I have always been philosophically disturbed by their claim to attach a technical definition to an ordinary phrase. If they wanted to introduce a novel concept, the four freedoms, they should do so in an intellectually honest way that does not lay claim to ordinary adjectives. The easiest way would be to invent a word -- "freefour" or "fourfree" (I'm not a marketing droid, that's the best I can come up with).
\end{minortechnicalrant}
PS. To the GGP that complained about MS nicking SMB and "extracting licensing fees", I've never had a problem inter-operating Windows File Sharing with various Linuxes. Just sayin.
The recipient has 1 and 3 (study and improve), even if they don't have the source. Sure, it's not as easy, but their freedom exists.
It's quite ridiculous to claim that someone's freedom is being denied by not giving them additional material. According to RMS's definition of freedom, I was under no obligation to give them the software in the first place, so by that logic not giving anything denies no freedom, but giving the software without the source denies freedom. Absurd.
Imagine I gave you a printed book for free, but not the source. Am I denying your freedoms?
Imagine a world without copyrights. Natural freedoms would exist -- use, copy, and modify all you want. The GPL clause of requiring source would have no legal basis. Any law created to enforce the GPL would only serve to deny freedom. This would be akin to consumer protection laws, some of which I approve of, some I don't, but don't call it freedom. That's just spin.
If it can suck all the hardcore purists into a place where they can quit annoying the rest of us, that'll be great.
Sorry, but anyone and everyone has this right. It is merely necessary (say in the context of a legal document, or any document for that matter) to just capitalize the phrase.
Hence common accepted usage is that the construct [free software] would mean its natural meaning, which could be interpreted as [zero cost software] or as [liberated software] depending on the context. However, the context [Free Software] would imply that there is a particular supplied definition given which pertains to the topic at hand.
Hence, in the Wikipedia article which talks about such a definition: ... the article gives the publicly accepted definition of **THE TERM** [Free Software] as opposed to the two words [free] and [software] used together, if you catch the meaning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition
This is no different at all to Microsoft adopting a term to use as their own:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_Source
If Microsoft get to define what they mean when they say [Shared Source], then by exactly the same right do the FSF get to say what they mean when they say [Free Software].
The term [Free Software] does indeed have an accepted definition, to whit:
"The modern definition has four points, which it numbers zero to three. It defines free software by whether or not the recipient has the freedoms to:
- run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)
- study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1)
- redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2)
- improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3)"
(quoted from the Wikipedia article about the definition).
Apart from just the GPL, the FSF keeps a list of software licenses which meet their definition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FSF_approved_software_licences
That is probably a very much longer list than people had imagined.
Let's revisit the GP for a second:
Let's say, I, as a developer write some software and give it to you, but just the binary. Let's say I let that you use, copy, and modify that software as you wish. In other words, you have natural freedoms to do as you please. Now RMS comes along as says "That's not freedom! you didn't give him the source!"
What I contend RMS should have said is "That's not freedom, the way I see it" or, "I think your definition of freedom is too narrow" or something that recognizes the particular subjectivity of his definition. The term "Free Software" is just too general a phrase to be subject to arbitrary redefinition.
You are correct, of course, that in the context of the FSF or GPL, "Free software" acquires a different meaning, but that's only within that context. Assuming that every time someone on the internet talks about "free software" (and doesn't explicitly link it to the particular FSF conception of freedom) they intend to invoke that context is presumptuous (although the speaker should probably be more clear).
The only thing you can study without the source is the programs behaviour. This is true, but it simply does not fit the definition of Free Software. To fit the definition, you must use one of these licenses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FSF_approved_software_licences
As for the rest of your post ... of course you are not denying freedoms ... you are just not supplying Free Software. That is it. If you write software ... then YOU and you alone decide exactly how you want to distribute it. It is YOUR software, so you do with it what you will.
***IF*** you choose to distribute your software under one of the licenses listed in the article I linked above, ***THEN*** your software is Free Software. By definition. If you use some other set of terms in your license, then it is not free software.
It is that simple. Nothing compels you to release your software under any type of license at all ... as the author of the software that decision is entirely your choice.
As for your thought "Any law created to enforce the GPL would only serve to deny freedom" ... sorry, you are wrong again. The law that enforces the GPL already exists, and it is called "Copyright Law".
Copyright Law says in effect that the author of a published work (such as a piece of software) gets to say exactly how (and by whom) his or her work may be copied and distributed. If the author chooses to release software under the GPL license, then Copyright Law enforces the terms in the GPL license for that work. There was even a recent US court case (Jacobsen v. Katzer) that upheld that very point.
You pretty much have understood it. Debian is what the FSF was using, but they wanted to sponsor a distribution that would use their definition of Free. Once that happened they switched internally to gNewSense.
Minor disagreements over the licenses + the fact that non-free/contrib is even offered at all is most of that right there...plus the gNS team wanted the improvements Ubuntu made to the system.
As for the rest of your post ... of course you are not denying freedoms ... you are just not supplying Free Software.
The whole point under debate is usage of the word "freedom". I and others know what Stallman means by Free (as in freedom) Software, we just don't agree with his GNU-speak usage of the word freedom.
If you write software ... then YOU and you alone decide exactly how you want to distribute it. It is YOUR software, so you do with it what you will.
Obviously. That wasn't the point under consideration.
As for your thought "Any law created to enforce the GPL would only serve to deny freedom" ... sorry, you are wrong again. The law that enforces the GPL already exists, and it is called "Copyright Law".
I guess you missed the first sentence of that paragraph: "Imagine a world without copyrights."
I feel like I'm arguing with another Anonymous Coward who jumped into the middle of the conversation without following along. In general I don't reply to Anonymous Cowards for exactly this kind of reason -- I don't like arguing with shadows, and most of their comments are so shallow or bad that they aren't worth replying to anyways. This will be my last reply.
Propaganda is the marketing of a political idea.
No sig for the moment.
First of all, SMB would have gone nowehere were it not adapted by microsoft in whatever way it was. That's not inherently bad or good all by itself, but it's true. All software is essentially 'built on the shoulders of giants' and even slight tweaks or re-implementations of small bits of it are not things that write themselves. Without the little bit of change brought into the SMB area by microsoft, and the enormous marketing dollars thrown at it, you sir, would not have an example to point to. Same with TCP/IP... etc. The idea is worth nothing until someone buys it. Just like baseball cards, doesn't matter which ones you have, they're worthless, unless you sell them, then you get something for them.
Speak for yourself.
Imagine a world without copyrights.
It would be as close to BSD as you could possibly get only there would be no way to enforce the clause about including the original authors. The liability clauses would probably be enforceable though. I suspect many would probably include the original author names at the top of their code just so other programmers who look at it know the lineage and history of the codebase. I also suspect many would give back patches and code changes because there is a strong benefit to keeping your codebase in sync with the mainline.
GPL would not exist at all because it uses copyright to "crack open" any codebase who incorporates the license. The "crack open" nature of GPL is what makes it a good fit for certian types of projects, but it also provides a strong dis-incentive toward "lifting" the code without giving back. Since people love to "lift" code (or music/video/whatever) because it is easy and free, the GPL needs teeth or it's main goals wouldn't pan out. For example without copyright, Apple could lift GPL code like Linux just as easy as they "lifted" the BSD codebase and the Linux crew would be powerless to stop them.
GPL is effective because you can sue people who do not follow it. The only reason you can sue people is GPL hinges on copyright law. Take away copyright law and GPL has no teeth.
Bottom line is GPL advocates *must* embrace, endorse and respect copyright law. GPL and the "community driven" software ecosystem that grew around it could not exist without copyright. Those who think their beloved GPL could exist without copyright need to do some serious self-reflection.
"freedom 3" is actually a burden, or a bond, not a freedom. I don't think there is a problem with writing that into the license, as long as folks agree to it before proceeding to use software under it. It's just not aptly named a "freedom."
Speak for yourself.
And to reply to myself, once you start self-reflecting, you might start thinking "well, I like GPL but the government needs to provide a way for it to function". I promise whatever direction your line of thinking takes you, you'll get something that looks a bit like the skeleton form of copyright law.
While I dont have any proof and I dont know enough of it's history, I imagine copyright law existed in some form throughout history. I also suspect it was never under the name "copyright law" because most of it grew organically... court case by court case. Hell, even if we tossed out copyright as we know it, the we'd probably grow right back into it through decades of case law.
But that's not the reason GLX is considered non-free. Besides the advertising clause, which is obnoxious, it is not licensed for "illegal" purposes.
You are correct, of course, that in the context of the FSF or GPL, "Free software" acquires a different meaning, but that's only within that context.
The ugly truth though is that it still falls under the umbrella of newspeak (which somebody else in the comments for this story called GNU-speak, which I find entirely appropriate):
newspeak: an official or semiofficial style of writing or saying one thing in the guise of its opposite, esp. in order to serve a political or ideological cause while pretending to be objective, as in referring to "increased taxation" as "revenue enhancement."
Requiring a person to give source is the very opposite of freedom. What Stallman is arguing for is a consumer protection obligation. Good or bad, it isn't freedom, and to label it as such is politics as usual.
I'm not a GPL hater, per se. What I do hate is the use of dishonest tactics. It's even worse when it's done by somebody as principled as Stallman, who if he saw these kinds of dirty tactics used by others would be the first to point them out. This is the guy who complains about Linux not being called GNU/Linux, and he completely perverts the definition of freedom to suit his ideology.
If you view advocates of proprietary software not through the lens of "technology" but through the lens of "religion" you arrive at the same conclusion: with proprietary software you abstain from asserting your ability to control your computer or have anyone but the proprietor control it for you. You aren't choosing the best technology as plenty of proprietary software has bugs which go unfixed, even after sometimes costly "upgrades". DRM, proprietary software secrecy, and serving as an intellectual bodyguard for those who would prohibit you from being nice to other people by sharing, or ($SAVIOUR forbid) retain control over your own computing life are the hallmarks of effective proprietors (we shouldn't complain about Apple's lack of software freedom because some people like the system enough to buy their computers, or we dare not highlight how ineffective our railing against Microsoft is while their OSes are the world's most popular, and that's just two johnny-come-lately proprietors for those who have been following computing since it began). So, the kind of control you want in other areas of life (you wouldn't buy a proprietary plumbing system for your new house, you wouldn't buy a car with the hood welded shut, you wouldn't choose an electrical system only one electrician could fix even though you're not a plumber, mechanic, or electrician yourself) is the kind of control you vow to never assert in the proprietary religion.
See how these religious-based attacks never really get into deeper issues and use name-calling as a substitute for explaining the differences between philosophies?
Digital Citizen
Your complaints should be measured against the other persistent reframing of software freedom Free Software activists also hear from those who don't see problems with proprietary software: choice. The hypocrisy of choice where the pursuit of software freedom is not a valid choice.
I know what won't change society to increase software freedom: placating proprietors. So far the FSF's mindset has been the most significant source of change: the GPL and development of GNU software are two incredibly important things in the world of computing. And the way they get done isn't by giving up.
Digital Citizen
I would hope it is not intentional. Using Gnu as a pun in some part of a name is simply greating.
GNU/gNewSense?
I could never say "guh-new" with a straight face. Silly.
This guy is way out there
Is criticism allowed here? Must we all bow to the one holy license that is chosen for us above all others?
I'm just going to come out and say that this distribution is absolutely pointless. If you want a collection of free software without the proprietary additions of Ubuntu, what do you use? Debian.
Don't like Debian? Use Fedora, which is also very "pure." In fact, I would say that most distributions make use of primarily or, in many cases, entirely Free software and content, Ubuntu being one notable exception that embraces the inclusion of proprietary bits.
"Free Software" != "free software"
This is why the OSI has the trademarked phrase "Open Source", and why many people are using the capitalized term "Software Libre", which is otherwise quite uncommon usage in English. They're not trying to redefine words.
Not every international business machines corporation is IBM. Best Buy isn't necessarily where you'll find the best deal on electronics and appliances. Circuit City isn't actually a city made up of circuits. General Motors actually makes motors specific to automobiles, and the whole automobiles, too. People claim phrases as distinct from the dictionary definitions of the individual words all the time.
The person with whom you are arguing should be capitalizing "Free Software" to make it more clear that he's not talking about some random software that is free in some random sense.
The GPL is more free than the BSD/MIT from a certain point of view. The GPL is less free than those licenses from a certain other point of view.
From the point of view of a developer who enhances another developer's code, the BSD is more free. This developer has more choices of what to do with the code regarding how he distributes it.
From the point of view of the person getting the object code from a developer, from the point of view of the code itself, and from the point of view of the original author, the GPL is more free. The person receiving the object code is given more choices for how to get updates and customizations. The original author is assured his work won't be sealed up from the end user.
If people were willing to view both points of view, it'd be clear that what matters is your point of view and which set of freedoms mean more to you.
I have no idea how you got modded flamebait. Hopefully the metamods will fix that. It's abundantly clear to me that you're right.
If you've bought the black box hardware and can't use it, the manufacturer already has your money.
If you refuse to buy the black box hardware, then they don't get your money.
It's a really simple difference to understand, and it would be a bigger incentive to hardware companies to put it to use.
Point of view does not matter in this case. When somebody is forced to give something to me, I have not gained freedom, I have gained government enforced regulation. This is in exactly the same ballpark as consumer protection laws. Ultimately, the law may be good or bad, but it is explicitly denying natural freedoms by forcing one party to act in favor of another.
That person isn't forced to give you anything. If they had written the code they provided you from scratch, they could do whatever they want with the source and binary. They made a choice to save themselves labor by leveraging a GPLed project. It's a choice.
The last is listed on their high priority projects. Unfortunately there are precious few motherboards that support coreboot. I do plan to buy one however and to tell them that's why I'm buying it.
In my version of reality, which may or may not be "regular people land", marketing is the scummy activity of making people want to buy what they don't need and won't improve their lives efficiently.
What I think you are referring to as the "positive" side of marketing, we call advertising. Advertising is good, especially if you can advertise only to people who really have their lives improved by your widget.
Apple has a great deal of marketing - the "switch" ads. They also advertise to the people who run Final Cut (mac only) about the faster version of X they now sell.
If you wan't people to get free gold and diamonds off your lawn, just advertise and they will - FAST!. If you want people to separate your (worthless) garbage for free, you have to market it as a "eco-friendly" event and trick them into it.
Is that clearer?
Oh please, get real. At least TRY to make a valid criticism. Of course it is freedom.
No-one ***requires*** any author to give source. An original author releases code under the GPL because he or she wants to. Period.
Anyone downstream who receives that code ... the code doesn't become theirs, the copyright still belongs to the original author. Anyone downstream is still able to modify the code to their own ends, and can still keep the modified result to themselves.
The one and only thing that is not allowed is for a downstream recipient of the code (thereby someone who is NOT the original author and copyright holder) to modify that code and then re-release for sale a binary-only version of the modified code. That act is clearly profiting unfairly from the work of the original author. Recent legal cases undertaken by the SFLC on behalf of BusyBox authors were a case in point of this. The people who got sued were NOT the authors of the code, the code was Free Software, and they were trying to release for sale binary-only copies.
Even then, all that was required to fix it was for the downstream recipients to release the BusyBox source code they were using ... which they hadn't written themselves in the first place!!!
So, in these cases ... the downstream recipient of the code is required to give source ... because it is not THEIR source to begin with!!!
Even schoolchildren get this simple concept ... do your own work. Don't crib off others, unless they are willing to let you, and even then only do it in ways that they let you.
But Mozilla is still behind it, like how Ballmer is doing a screaming monkey dance at their new IE plugin
1) Puns are not usually considered clever. A "gnu"-based pun is unlikely to be an exception.
2) It appears we are the target market: http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Main/HowToHelp
They want people to promote it on Wikipedia? (and Slashdot, of course) That is an express desire to be viewed favorably by a wider audience. Nice try in ducking the problem, but that kind of denial isn't helping anyone.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
Why so much hate? If you don't like it use one of the other 10k distros out there, sheesh.
If they had written the code they provided you from scratch, they could do whatever they want with the source and binary.
You can't place restrictions on information and call that freedom, for example by labeling some information GPL and exclaiming: "Share only under these conditions!". This applies even when you wrote the original source. When there is complete freedom, there is no ownership of information, unless you keep it to yourself.
The non-free parts are things like Accelerated 3D Graphics, Video codecs, MP3 players, DVD decoders, WiFi drivers ....
So good luck with using any of these with gNewSense
This is why Mint is so popular (it includes all this by default) purity is all very well ....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Okay... and you're probably one of those who call RMS and ESR radical idealists?
Here's a hint: RMS wants software that's totally and completely free, too. He wants the information, including the source, to always be free to everyone.
The GPL is the closest to that he and his cohorts have found to allowing that under the current copyright laws, treaties, and conventions.
Nobody said it was perfect, but can you can't exactly say you're not idealistic and he is when your ideal is that freedom means absolute freedom.
The GPL is the closest to that he and his cohorts have found to allowing that under the current copyright laws, treaties, and conventions.
As I've already said, I don't have a problem with the GPL; it was a clever invention and works well for its intended purposes. My problem is the claim that requiring source code grants freedom, when in actuality the requirement takes freedom away.
If freedom is important and means anything, then the concept is important enough to protect from misappropriation. Imagine the world woke up tomorrow and said "You know what? This copyright business is more trouble than it's worth.", and copyright law was abolished. Yay! Now we have our natural freedoms to use, copy, and modify software as we wish.
Now where does the source requirement stand? There is no natural basis for it. You can't give away your software and demand others only redistribute it with source. That demand is the opposite of freedom.
Nobody said it was perfect, but can you can't exactly say you're not idealistic and he is when your ideal is that freedom means absolute freedom.
I'm not against being idealistic. Indeed, one of my ideals is not engaging in intellectually dishonest tactics like newspeak.
Such an old debate...but an interesting one. You could have a whole college course devoted to freedom.
Is freedom free? What constitutes freedom? Do you have to have laws to enforce freedom, or does freedom mean not enforcing any laws? Don't you first have to answer those questions, and define what freedom is, before you have the requirements to be able to argue about if a certain copyright law constitutes freedom?
You can argue that copyright law takes away freedom. After all, you can argue that laws are restrictive. In that case, I'd say the BSD license "wins", because it undoes what copyright law does and claims that the law basically does not apply there, and anything whatsoever is possible with the code. Pretty obvious.
However, you can also argue that laws grant freedoms, however backwards that may sound, by defining where one's freedom ends and another's begins. Like it or not, that is reality. You can't do anything you want, not if it treads on the freedoms of other life. This is the GPL. It uses the law to enforce the desire for developers to see their work, their life, not be "tread" on by others in ways they don't like, namely of course not wanting to see the code they helped create be closed up, which they might see as selfish and whatnot. However, some developers are cool with that and don't have a problem sharing even with those who would completely use any and all aspects of their work in whatever way they see fit without giving anything back whatsoever. Whether it's closed software that's going to be used in missiles, or to run a proprietary toaster, they don't want to see that line crossed, they want to be given back to.
The latter utilizes the intention of copyright law by enforcing what the creator wants. Copyright law can be used today to enforce anything no matter how trivial. If I don't want you using a picture I made on your website because I don't like your face, I can enforce that, though the GPL itself is of course much less restrictive. The former emphasizes that there are no restrictions whatsoever.
You can debate about the political effect each license has had on the economy and which one can be or will be more successful until you're blue, but please, get the basics out of the way. GPL side: Of course the GPL is restrictive. Duh. It uses laws which restrict what anyone can do with it. Does that restriction ultimately yield more software that is only GPL restricted instead of completely closed software? That's a matter of debate and I could argue several points in favor of that. Berkly side: Yes, there are no restrictions, but ultimately having access to software will grant more "freedom" to users and developers in a sense, so instead of only focusing on the words of your license, look at the real economic impact and tell me which one seems to be more widespread now, Linux or BSD, and why that might be.
Maybe ultimately what it all comes down to is there are a lot of "selfish" developers out there who want copyright laws enforced on their code, and perhaps the GPL strikes a balance between completely anal control and complete lack of it that many developers like. (Yes, you can claim that not wanting their code to be used closed source is selfish, just like you can argue that allowing it to be is as well by not considering the impact of that closed software that you helped create on the freedoms of others.)
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
You could have a whole college course devoted to freedom. [...] Don't you first have to answer those questions, and define what freedom is, before you have the requirements to be able to argue about if a certain copyright law constitutes freedom?
In any debate, you can get so mired into philosophical questions that the practical usefulness of the debate is destroyed. I stick to fundamental principles and concrete examples. Yeah, you can stretch, squint, appeal to indirect-ad-infinitum consequences to make any point you want. Eventually you end up with "Freedom is Slavery".
You can argue that copyright law takes away freedom. [...] Pretty obvious.
Indeed, and "pretty obvious" wins over stretching, squinting, and indirect consequences.
You can't do anything you want, not if it treads on the freedoms of other life. This is the GPL.
This is a bad analogy. In one case you are violently ending somebody's life against their will -- you are taking away something they once had. In the other case a person voluntarily accepts a binary, and the GPL demands that additional material be given.
It uses the law to enforce the desire for developers to see their work, their life, not be "tread" on by others in ways they don't like
There's no basis in freedom that allows somebody to dictate what others do with their work. This is the obvious point that Stallman has managed to pervert because of his desire for everybody to have source code. If I buy a PS3 I can use it as a cheap computer, even if Sony sells them at a loss with the expectation that I will buy games for it. I can be a jerk and not let my little brother play with it. That's freedom. Sony may not like it. My little brother may not like it. But there it is.
Freedom means being able to do as you please -- within your own powers. It does not mean somebody else is compelled to help you do as you please. I have the freedom to read a book, but if I don't know how to read I can't. I cannot force somebody else to teach me how to read in the name of freedom.
The clause about giving source is about empowerment/enabling, not freedom.
You're arguing about copyright law, one law among millions. Laws are there to, in theory, balance the power between individuals so that one can't deprive the other of things they don't want. That's why murder is related, but of course I wasn't saying that copyright violations = murder. At some point, someone felt that being able to do ANYthing with information that someone else created (or if you want to get philosophical simply reorganized from existing information) was bad, and copyright law came about. Of course this mostly or purely stemmed from wanting to make more money by trying to stifle piracy no doubt.
;) I wonder how much contribution companies like IBM and Google would give towards open source if everything used the BSD license, perhaps more perhaps less. Who knows, perhaps in a world without copyright laws, everyone would have accepted that information is always to be shared and everything would be much more open, or perhaps it would have created a world of greater secrecy and greed in which all source was buried and hidden from public view much more. Perhaps it really comes down to the hearts of those wanting to help others and if they are able and want to do so, and the amount of free software in the world is merely a side effect of it. Interesting to think about.
Are you saying that you don't agree with or like any copyright law, or are you simply attacking Stallman? If so I'd agree (on both points actually) with attacking Stallman for that, in theory, but I think that in reality it's different because I do believe the GPL has brought more freedom via the creation of more software from the lack of that freedom to close code that was once open. I think businesses would normally be much greedier and I don't think nearly as much open source code work would have gotten done, but that's very debatable.
At least there's a way to share software freely, even with annoying copyright laws getting in the way. Now, if only the same could be said about patents, where openly sharing those requires either lots of money or lots of time, and in that system you're guilty until proven innocent because of the very non-brilliant work of those in charge of patent approval.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
I think you should carefully re-read my previous post and think critically about what I have said. Consider the concrete examples I have given. In particular, pay attention to the difference between freedom and empowerment/enabling.
I say this not to be a jerk, but because your reply seems more like a personal essay rather addressing my argument. At some point I can't just keep on repeating the same argument over and over if it is going to be ignored.
However, I will address a few points here that will hopefully clarify things. Even so, I again implore you to re-read my previous post with an open mind, and really think about what I have said. The definition of freedom is important, and we shouldn't give up our freedoms while being told it is in the name of freedom. If we do agree to give up freedom for other benefits, it must be done with our eyes wide open.
Are you saying that you don't agree with or like any copyright law
No, I have never said that. Only that we recognize when our freedoms are being taken away for other benefits, so that we may choose wisely.
or are you simply attacking Stallman?
I am attacking his perversion of the word freedom when stating that source must be given.
I am NOT arguing whether copyright laws are good or bad. I am NOT debating the merits of the GPL vs BSD. I am NOT attacking Stallman's ideology.
There is a basis in freedom of me having control over my own work if I want it. Otherwise I'm not free to exercise that control.
The developer in the middle, who takes the code the original developer wrote and provides it to the end user, is free to choose not to select GPLed software as the basis of his work.
He can write it himself, or he can choose a BSD/MIT style license.
This means the last developer in the chain has a choice of using GPLed code at the expense of having to provide the source (if the end user even wants it) or to not use GPLed code.
Considering you're giving someone a choice of whether or not to do something and asking for a very small consideration on their part, I do not see how that diminishes their freedom. It's an extra option, not a reduction of options.
If all software was forced to be GPL, that would be a reduction in options and I'd agree it was a reduction in freedom.
Your definition of freedom seems to come down to one of two things. One is that there must be no costs or conditions to any act. The other possibility is that people must not be allowed to negotiate consideration or contracts. Either of these options provides more freedom for one party in the short term, but less for the other. In the long run, either one comes down to a loss of overall freedom, because nobody really is free if they cannot protect the fruits of their own labor.
There is a basis in freedom of me having control over my own work if I want it. Otherwise I'm not free to exercise that control.
You are confusing freedom with capability and power over others. You might as well say because you aren't an omnipotent god you don't have freedom. That argument doesn't take you very far.
Considering you're giving someone a choice of whether or not to do something and asking for a very small consideration on their part, I do not see how that diminishes their freedom.
We're talking about information. When I have freedom, I can do with information as I please. If I see you perform a clever trick, I can learn the trick and perform it myself, improve on it, and teach it to others. If you tell me a good story, I can tell the story to others, changing it as I see fit. Copyright law takes away natural freedoms -- the framers of the US Constitution knew this, and that's why they justified why they were creating copyright law and put limits on it:
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
In the long run, either one comes down to a loss of overall freedom, because nobody really is free if they cannot protect the fruits of their own labor.
This is the problem with Stallman's perversion of language. It has people making "Freedom is Slavery" claims -- people who would be derisive of these claims if made by a corporation, dictator, or religious nut. The vast majority of GPL advocates blame copyright law for the need for GPL, because it takes away freedom, yet here you are arguing for copyright. Freedom is Copyright.
The other possibility is that people must not be allowed to negotiate consideration or contracts.
I forgot to reply to this part. Contract law is between individual parties. Copyright law (which the GPL rests on) is a default limitation placed on everybody. So while I support contract law, it doesn't give you the same power over your work and others as copyright law. As an example, when somebody breaks a non-disclosure agreement they can be sued, but the damage is done. Everybody else is free to report the information.
Why wait until someone to put up a new live-cd, the perfect one, the way you would like, e.g. with just totally free software or perhaps full of practical propriatary for you mundane needs? Just use Debian-Live and easily choose your favorite packages to make your own Linux Live-CD! Now everyone can be happy! RMS can make his own live CD with just gcc, emacs, a lisp interpreter, e-mail reader and a text browser! (I mean... Just gcc and emacs.)
http://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/
Make your own Live-CD and be happy and free!... or not free, or not happy. Whatever, now it's your call, dude!!...
They want people to promote it on Wikipedia? (and Slashdot, of course) That is an express desire to be viewed favorably by a wider audience.
I don't see the correlation between those two things. Slashdot, for one, has nothing to do whatever with any "wider audience" of any sort, so I don't see its relevance. As to Wikipedia, I would say that this is a not a desire to "be viewed favorably by a wider audience," but to simply be viewed by a wider audience, to better reach people who are already sympathetic to the idea. That's effective marketing in a nutshell. Read any marketing textbook, the first rule you're gonna see in big bold 48-point font is "Sell it to the people who already want it, you dummy!"
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!