Re: software distribution criteria -- The OpenBSD case

[MJ Ray]

Davi Leal <address@hidden> wrote:
>     'Free'            C++, gNewSense, PHP, Ruby, etc.
>     'Almost-Free'     OpenBSD, Debian, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc.

Once again, this ignores that there are few fundamental differences
between gNewSense and Debian.  In short:

- gNewSense will include non-free-software material that Debian won't
(FDL-with-invariants and some badgeware), so Debian is freer by design
in that way,

- Debian is producing a GNU/Hurd version that gNewSense doesn't, so
Debian is freer by design in that way,

- gNewSense pretends the non-free archives it can use (including
restricted / Multiverse) do not exist, even though it is easy to find
out how to use them, while the Debian project tracks some non-free
packages, particularly when trying to prepare for relicensing as free
software, so gNewSense is slightly freer for developers and organisers
in that way, but there's little difference for most users - if they
want to add automatically-installable non-free software, it's there
ready-to-go.

It is absurd to label one as Free and the other not.

Also, technically, I think the BSD ports do not contain non-free
software themselves - they only contain computer-readable instructions
on how to install software, AIUI - but they will automatically install
non-free software in their default configuration.  They were one of
the situations I considered when suggesting the "automatically
install" default configuration test for distributions.

Regards,
-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
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