Re: [gNewSense-users] RFC Firefox Free Software

[Dave Crossland]

On 14/11/06, Andrew Wigglesworth <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 November 2006 22:28, Atanu Datta wrote:
> > > But there are some real free software issues about Firefox.  The biggest
> > > one is that it is set up to offer downloads of non-free plug-ins from
> > > Mozilla's own site.
>
> This is the acid test isn't it?  If Firefox is not free, then we must not
> distribute it.  Full stop; and that means the repositories.

Well no, it is free, but it invites you to use non-free.

This is the same issue as is being discussed in the WINE thread.

I think that gNewSense should NOT carry software that invites
non-free, like WINE and ndiswrapper and vanilla Firefox (even if its
renamed) - if people are in these unlikely fringe cases where they
want to run a GPL program that has no native GNU+Linux version, then
they are going to know enough to install WINE themselves.

The WHOLE POINT of gNewSense is that it is for a 100% Free computer.
People who want to compromise their freedom will be much better served
by distros with repositories called 'non-free' and 'restricted'.

I imagine that when Ubuntu assimilate Debian's repositories, they move
"contrib" into "Universe". This means that in the great gNewSense
repository clean-up, after removing anything with a freedom-related
bug mentioned in Debians bugtracker, most of whats in contrib should
also be removed.

--
Regards,
Dave