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On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 17:05, Austin Godber wrote:
> Derek Neighbors wrote:
> > I never thought I would say this...
> >=20
> > SuSe cares about users freedom as much as Apple does.  So, if you don't
> > care about your freedom, you are better off moving to OS X.  It "just
> > works", which appears to be your primary concern. If concern number one
> > is losing "the evil empire" and the mandate is it has to "just work",
> > you should look at OS X.
>=20
> I would tend to agree with you on this, and evidence that somewhat suppor=
ts this=20
> theory is that SuSe does not allow ISO downloads of anything but older ve=
rsions.

Not only do they not seem friendly in making code readily available.=20
They do a lot of proprietary software development and include it in
their distribution.  I believe that their installer and most of their
configuration tools are non-free.  I think this is dangerous for users.

> So, can you have a for profit distrabution AND care about User Freedom?  =
And=20
> what does "User Freedom" mean?  I imagine there is a Debian Philosophy do=
c=20
> somewhere that addresses that.

To be clear.  Freedom and price/profit are distinct issues.  For
example, Red Hat to date has been a very good citizen in the Free
Software community.  While they do lots of work to try to make their
distribution a commerical success (i.e. profit).  They generally make
almost everything they write GPL or some other Free Software license.=20
They also pay a large number of developers to work on Free Software.=20
For some time they were even assigning copyright to the Free Software
Foundation on many works.

A recent example of this (if Im not mistaken) is Anaconda.  The
installer for Red Hat.  Progeny, a company started by the creator of
Debian, is taking it and making it work with Debian and apt.  An example
of the fact that it is Free Software being better for the community.  It
is a shame say YaST couldn't have been extended in the same way.

I do not know if there is a Debian Doc on Freedom.  I will tell you what
User Freedom Means:


Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy,
distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it
refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

      * The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).=20
      * The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your
        needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition
        for this.=20
      * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
        (freedom 2).=20
      * The freedom to improve the program, and release your
        improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits
        (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for
        this.

You can get the full defintion here --> (
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html )
--=20
Derek Neighbors
GNU Enterprise
http://www.gnuenterprise.org
derek@gnue.org

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