Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

[Les Mikesell]

Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> 
> The tolerance for non-Free Software in Linux's sources (and anywhere
> else), be it non-Free firmware blobs, be it drivers developed under
> NDA (whose code is obscured and harder or impossible to understand and
> adapt to one's needs as a consequence of the NDA), all revolve around
> acceptance, endorsement and even promotion of unethical practices that
> I don't want to condone or participate in.

Not wanting to participate in distributing code without source is one 
thing; calling it unethical is something else and implies that everyone 
else is wrong for doing it.

> Working towards retaining the ability for people to distribute and use
> blobs along with Linux, rather than merely removing the blobs like we
> do in Linux-libre, amounts to condoning this practice.  It does not
> advance our cause.  In fact, as others pointed out, such changes make
> it easier for unethical vendors to add even more of their blobs to
> Linux (or co-maintained packages), which is actually detrimental to
> our cause:

And again, vendors who distribute code without source are not 
necessarily unethical even if you don't want to participate in helping 
the people who would find that code useful or necessary.

> Have fun.  And please don't bother disputing the values that led to my
> conclusion, they're firmly set and the flame war would probably just
> annoy everyone who doesn't enjoy this kind of discussion.  Now, if you
> find any flaws in the reasoning that took me from the premises to the
> conclusions, I'd be happy to read about them and discuss them.

Personally I consider competition and equality (i.e. having your choice 
of components) to be much more important than source availability for 
any component.  Thus restrictions on combining and redistributing 
components are much more evil, unethical, and detrimental to long term 
developments than any current NDA or binary blob could ever be.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com