Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Any folks in Manchester interested in participating in an Ubuntu Global Jam event if I were to organise one?

[MJ Ray]

Bob Ham <address@hidden>
> I would find working for the benefit of a distribution that spies on 
> its users and sends local search strings to Canonical, to be 
> demotivating.

I would, too.  I believe free software can do better than "all hail
our new rulers: same as the old rulers, except now they don't hide how
they spy on us".

If anyone else believes similar, please come help us develop a
distribution that's not controlled by any single corporation:
http://www.debian.org/intro/help

That said, there's http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#Debian
- Personally, I'd also welcome anyone who wants to help move the
repository of non-free software off of the project's main servers and
online package database, but experience suggests it would be good to
work on some free software in a positive way first.

It's also a rather awkward thing to ask: non-free software supporters
don't care whether FSF approves debian or not; whereas free software
supporters don't really want to spend any time on non-free software.
Maybe the only way this change will be made would be if FSF supporters
do it, or FSF funds it?

The mentioning of non-free firmware files is even more awkward - if a
system doesn't work correctly without them and they do exist, should
the installer really hide that fact?

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/