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Proprietary Blobs and the Pursuit of a Free Kernel

Posted by Soulskill on from the free-as-in-beerspeech dept.

jammag writes "Ever since the GNewSense team pointed out that the Linux kernel contains proprietary firmware blobs, the question of whether a given distro is truly free software has gotten messier, notes Linux pundit Bruce Byfield. The FSF changed the definition of a free distribution, and a search for how to respond to this new definition is now well underway. Who wins and what solutions are implemented could have a major effect on the future of free and open source software. Debian has its own solution (by allowing users to choose their download), as do Ubuntu and Fedora (they include the offending firmware by default but make it possible to remove it). Meanwhile, the debate over firmware rages on. What resolves this issue?"

3 of 405 comments (clear)

  1. Re:1 Answer: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll
    Ah the old "BSD is freer because you can do what you want without being compelled to give back WHAT YOU TOOK WITHOUT GIVING BACK UNDER MY BSD LICENSE YOU'RE A JERK"

    At the least the GPL is honest about what obligations people should have in order to improve the software.

  2. Re:Supporting the freedom for my hardware to not w by jellomizer · · Score: 1, Troll

    RMS and FSF are really pushing it too far. Their agenda subconsciously is to prevent people from making money from their work.
    1. Free Software and Source Code. (There goes the traditional business Model, of software profit)
    2. SaaS is now considered Evil. (Fine you have have the software and the source however if you want to run it you will need our huge infrastructure to get the amazing things our product does, but you can use ours for a nominal fee, now that is out)
    3, Firmware/Flash (Ok you have the software for free you can easily afford the hardware, but we open ourselfs and loss of millions of dollars of R&D the next week because our firmware needs to be open source)

    It seems they just want you to make money by supporting the product. But a well done application should be easy enough to use that you don't need expensive support. You can talk about greed and capitalism but pushing to reduce methods of making money with software will have a chilling effect on the world.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  3. Re:I am typing this from Gnewsense by heffrey · · Score: 0, Troll

    Actually I have got Vista and I'm delighted with it.