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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.
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.
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.
Another serious point to being "free" is reliability. Linux is reliable because it is open. Dilute the openness, and the reliability gets watered down, too.
I wrote parts of this stuff
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?
Your caricaturized analogies apply to all organized social movements. You may attempt to devalue any pursuit of social objective as "religious", as religions are also organized social movements in pursuit of an objective. Here: - Neoliberal capitalism is a form of church. - State protection of industries are the original sin. - Milton Friedman is the prophet who will save us from our sins. - The Bretton-Woods institutions are the equivalent of missonaries spreading the gospel of neoliberalism to "3rd world countries. - Karl Marx is the devil. And this demonstrates, what?
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
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
I call delusional bullshit, and here's why.
There's a massive difference between "bullshit" and "being wrong" that I wish Slashdotters would learn. You probably believe the the PP to be wrong, so say that instead of insulting them. Even if you think they're deliberately spreading information they don't believe to be true, the normal rules of society say you don't just insult someone simply because they're wrong.
It doesn't mean that, and it never did. (And don't even begin to pull that bullshit that there's no word in the English language that means "libre". There is. It's "liberated".)
Not remotely true. Free software is exactly the same as a "free society". In a free society, you're not free to do whatever you want: for instance, you can't take someone's freedom away from them. (You two can engage in a contract to agree to do something, but the other party is still free to terminate or breech the contract. They may have to pay some consequences, but it doesn't diminish their freedom.) Or "free time"; you aren't obliged to do something in particular doing that time, but you aren't allowed to do anything. For instance, during free time at school you aren't allowed to leave the grounds; at work you aren't allowed to spend ten minutes undoing your last week's work.
And "liberated" means something different from "libre". Something has only been liberated if it previously lacked freedom, and now has it; I am free, but I've never been liberated.
Look out!
Communities where maintainers know each other by nothing else than email can easily be infiltrated by "hostile" talent.
What, precisely, does this have to do with the Debian OpenSSH fiasco?
The Debian fubar was caused because the person responsible for packaging OpenSSH didn't have a clue about security, not because he was "hostile".
If you want a real example of "hostile" code, one need only look at the Interbase backdoor, where a backdoor was included in every version shipped for 7 years. (Oh, whoops - that was commercial software, not open source, so it kinda defeats your argument, doens't it?)
One step at a time.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
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.