Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

Alexandre Oliva aoliva at redhat.com
Wed Jul 23 07:00:00 UTC 2008


On Jul 22, 2008, Antonio Olivares <olivares14031 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> First I got a 406 error: (never heard of that one)

The server knows the languages in which the article is available and
chooses the best for you, according to your language preferences set
in your browser and transmitted to the server.  In this case, the
article was only available in Portuguese, and you didn't have
Portuguese configured as an acceptable language, so you got that
error.  I'm looking for a nicer way to present that error page, but so
far I couldn't figure out how to do.  Not that I put much time into
it, mind you.  I don't even know whether this kind of language
automated selection is a feature implemented in the Apache http server
or in svnwiki :-(

> Free software for the end user with four fundamental liberties
> (3) if you modify it you have to distribute the modificiations(this is the part that has hit the distros I talked about)

That's not an accurate translation, actually.  It says you have the
*freedom* to modify the software and distribute modifications.
There's no "if/then" there.  You don't have an obligation to
distribute anything just because you made modifications.  Turning this
freedom into an obligation, like a handful of OSI-approved licenses
do, denies users the freedom to distribute (or not).

> "Restrições adicionais" na GPLv3

> Additional restrictions

> Something with DRM (Digital Rights Management)
> That nothing should deprive the end user to do as he/she pleases with the products that he/she gets.  There is also the famous Tivo mentioned.  

Yep.  Actually, the title of that section is intentionally misleading
(catchy, if you will), because people are likely to start reading the
article it under the faulty assumption that there are additional
restrictions in GPLv3, but the truth is that GPLv3, like earlier
releases of the GPL, doesn't have any restrictions; it actually works
to *prevent* people from adding restrictions, in ways that GPLv2 may
have unintentionally permitted.

> Wbat I also have to thank you again if not already done, is for your
> patience, for your stregth and your courage to promote the
> message(s) that you have conveyed.

Thanks for your support.

-- 
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}




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