Re: [GNU-linux-libre] [PATCH] gnu: Add ungoogled-chromium.

[Julie Marchant]

On 02/16/2019 05:25 AM, Brett Gilio wrote:
> I agree with everything Bill said in his message, and I heavily
> encourage all of us lurking in this mailing list with an opinion on the
> matter to please state your opinion on this controversy and the Guix
> relationship to the FSDG.
> 
> The free software guidelines are first and foremost put up by the free
> software community by what is specified to be important to the values of
> free software. This needs to be addressed sooner than later, because the
> act of solidarity on the part of the community here is a tremendously
> crucial and singular event.
> 
> I'd like to see the offerings of free software to grow, and include
> chromium if chromium has a reasonable method of liberation. But there is
> yet to be a complete audit to identify the problems. We can not rely
> solely on speculation, so lets get to the bottom of this once and for
> all.

I think that assuming Chromium is no good until something no good is
found in it is a wrong approach.

I don't understand what's so complicated about this issue. In justice
systems, we adopt an "innocent until proven guilty" system because you
can't really prove innocence, only guilt. Would it not make sense to use
this tried and tested system when evaluating whether or not a program is
libre? The only argument I've seen on the matter is the way copyright
works, but Chromium is under the Modified BSD License according to
documentation I was able to find. If some files are not actually covered
by this license, or some other license, it would be very easy to simply
point to the file. As far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong here,
no one in the entire history of this claim about Chromium being
proprietary has ever done so. If I'm wrong about this, though, then it
seems to me that the correct action to take would be to address that
issue, if not upstream, then in a fork.

-- 
Julie Marchant
http://onpon4.github.io

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