Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Ubuntu 9.10 Release Party - 30th October

[Matt Lee]

On 10/19/2009 03:21 AM, Paul Waring wrote:

> If you believe the FSF, even Debian isn't a free software distribution
> (rather ironic, as gNewSense is apparently based on it...)

Debian's Social Contract does say that all software in the main
distribution will be free software. Unfortunately, that's not always
true in practice. Debian has repeatedly made tacit or explicit
exceptions for specific pieces of nonfree software, such as the blobs
included in or accompanying Linux. We're still hopeful that there won't
be such exceptions in the future, but we can't turn a blind eye to the
situation as it stands today.

Debian also provides a repository of nonfree software. According to the
project, this software is "not part of the Debian system." We understand
that's important for organizational reasons, but users would be
hard-pressed to make a distinction. The nonfree repositories are often
featured as prominently as the main ones throughout Debian's web site,
documentation, and other materials.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/common-distros.html

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature