kernel-libre (hopefully 100% Free) for Fedora 8 and rawhide

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Mar 26, 2008, Andrew Farris <lordmorgul at gmail.com> wrote:

> In the context of a user wanting his system to be free from using
> proprietary drivers... how can it possibly 'hurt' him to have drivers
> for hardware he doesn't even have be present on his disk.  This thread
> and effort seems entirely pointless to me.

You're missing the point.

It indeed doesn't cause me any direct harm if there are non-Free bits
that I don't depend on in the kernel or the distro I use.  That's why
I can choose Fedora.

But this does cause me harm when I want to recommend a distro to
someone else.

I can't recommend my distro of choice, Fedora, because Fedora endorses
and promotes non-Free Software, and this endorses and feeds the social
problem that I devote my life to fighting.

I can't distribute my distro of choice, Fedora, because Fedora doesn't
permit me to do so in a way that doesn't involve my distributing
non-Free Software and feeding this social problem myself.

Regardless of what happens on my computer, when I recommend Fedora to
others, or give them copies of Fedora, they might become dependent on
the non-Free bits, and only realize it after recommending it to
others, saying things like "it just works".

I've seen this happen to many Ubuntu users, including ones that were
fervorous Free Software advocates but who didn't realize there were
hidden non-Free bits in Ubuntu.


When they figure that out, they may even come back to me and ask me
how I could recommend it to them, being the 100% Free Software guy
that I am.

See how it can hurt me?


> 'shipping' bits that don't get used is completely innocuous.

*That*'s the mistake you're making.  It's not.  It has long-term
detrimental social consequences, and that's why I oppose it.  That's
why I refuse to do it myself, and that's why I discourage others from
doing it.  That's why I'd like Fedora to at least offer people a
choice of distributing a Free Fedora, rather than forcing people to
choose between not sharing Fedora or advancing the social problem that
the Free Software Movement was created to stop.


You may find this text enlightening:
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/draft/flisol-libre-2008.en

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}