Is Fedora *really* Free?

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Oct 19, 2006 at 15:30:31 -0500,
  Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-10-19 at 15:00 -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> > > 
> > > I'm not sure what you mean by caring.  I thought *BSD style
> > > licensing was for people who cared about the users of the
> > > code and did not want to impose restrictions to prevent
> > > the best combinations of code from being available.
> > 
> > I think that is backwards. GPL ensures freedom for users. BSD ensures
> > freedom for developers.
> 
> How do propose a non-developer user might use something he can't obtain
> because distribution is prohibited?   Some users might find the OSX
> kernel useful with its mix of BSD and non-free components but they'll
> never have a similar choice to use something like that with any linked
> GPL code.

They might be able to use it, but their freedom to tinker may be very limited
depending on the conditions under which the nonfree parts are made.