Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

[Les Mikesell]

Gordon Messmer wrote:
> 
> I have never seen any reason to believe that Ken and Dennis have ever 
> been interested in Free Software.

In most companies, the employees who create things do not own them and a 
different set of people would determine the licensing.  So that's kind 
of irrelevant.

> I personally object to the statement 
> that GNU is an evolution of a movement started by Ken and Dennis because 
> it implies that they were or are involved in the development of Free 
> Software.

Their work was certainly the cause of much cooperative free software 
development and my impression is that they were "involved" in making it 
happen at the universities even if their own code wasn't free at the 
time (but maybe you could find some of it in OpenSolaris now).

 > I'd love be shown wrong, as I have a great deal of respect
> for their technical achievements, and would only respect them more if 
> they were a part of the Free Software community.

If you stop thinking of free software as something that can't co-exist 
with and be combined with non-free code (which really only applies to 
GPL-encumbered code) the way things developed would make more sense.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com