Re: Debian vs gNewSense -- FS criteria

[Davi Leal]

I respect anyone opinion, included the MJ's one, whose comments rocks!.

Anyway, I reply to the below MJ's email, adding to RMS, due to I am personally 
interested in knowing the RMS' opinion about the MJ's comments.  So I will be 
able to form my own personal opinion.

I personally think keeping communication channels open is a good thing.


MJ Ray wrote:
> Davi Leal 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,