Re: org.omg link on Classpath homepage

[Andrew Haley]

Stuart Ballard writes:
 > Andrew Haley wrote:
 > > FSF pages don't link to unfree software projects.  It seems that OMG
 > > is not be an unfree software project, because "Implementations of the
 > > OMG specifications - such as Object Request Brokers, IDL compilers,
 > > and UML-based modeling tools - are not produced by OMG. They are,
 > > instead, produced by software vendors or suppliers..."
 > 
 > But the link is provided specifically to get some software that *is* 
 > produced by the OMG, and is non-free.

Where is this software?

 > I see three distinct issues here:
 > 
 > 1) The link doesn't actually take you to a place where you can get the 
 > software in question, so it's pretty useless as a link anyway.
 > 
 > 2) The link is in a section labelled "providers for free core packages", 
 > but the software in question is not free. You could argue that "free" in 
 > this context means zero-cost, but on a GNU project such usage is at best 
 > VERY ambiguous and at worst outright misleading.

Where is this link?

 > 3) GNU projects aren't supposed to link to non-free software, so the 
 > link shouldn't exist in the first place. A link to OMG *could* be 
 > legitimate, if it was in the context of "the people who define the CORBA 
 > specification, including the org.omg packages". But even though the OMG 
 > is not in itself a non-free software project, I can't see how "go to the 
 > OMG to get this software", when the software in question is non-free, is 
 > not a link to non-free software.
 > 
 > To fix 3, the link must be removed entirely. If for some reason 3 
 > doesn't need to be fixed (eg I'm misinterpreting GNU project policy), at 
 > least 1 and 2 should be.

If there is a pointer to unfree software it must, per GNU rules, be removed.

But I've failed to find it, and I did try.

Andrew.