Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jun  9, 2008, Alan Cox <alan at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 02:54:07PM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> license or by copyright law.  As I stated before, it's a moral,
>> ethical and social issue, even if it's also a negligible legal issue.

> You can load the CPU firmware updates by

> - Having the BIOS load it
> - Having the kernel load it
> - Having user space apps load it

This completely neglects the question as to how you got the firmware
update in the first place.

It's like going "Your honor, I shouldn't be punished for the alleged
murder because I didn't kill the victim, the bullet did.  I just
pulled the trigger.  Anyone else could have done that and the victim
would end up dead just the same, so why should I be punished for
something that anyone else could have done?"

What kind of a defense is that?

It's obvious that who put the bullet in motion has responsibility over
the result, even though the victim could have got the bullet in her
chest with help from anyone else, or even without help.

Likewise, it's obvious that whoever distributed the firmware to you
has responsibility over the result, even though you could have got the
firmware from many others, or even got them straight from the vendor.

Of course, in the case of non-Free Software, the bullet doesn't kill
right away; it rather contains addictive poison that the vendor puts
in there to get the victims dependent, paralyzed and even thinking
it's good for them.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}