Re: [gNewSense-users] Re: free is not sufficient

[rek2GNU/Linux]

first of all let me explain that I am from Spain, living in Boston so my 
English is rusty and I talk in spanish like 90% of the day since lot of 
people talk Spanish here in Boston :-)
now with that out of the way:

I have to agree with you that we should let the user choose to be a 
"slave" or not, as long the software we provide is Free Software we have 
nothing to worry about, hmm is like
a security tool, you can use  it in many ways, to us to package it and 
give it with the distribution cause is free software  wont mean that 
someone is going to use it for evil doing.. and even if they do is their 
choice..
hope I get my point out. now if this package was not free then.. of 
course is not going into the system, wine case is free software so I 
vote that we indeed should include it also Samba. Samba sometimes is 
usefull in many ways and that don't means people is *only* going to use 
it to connect to non-free systems.. some people like to use samba 
between GNU/Linux systems and others.

Chris Fernandez


James Buchanan wrote:
> It's an interesting point: is this distribution supposed to contain 
> only Free software, or is it supposed to force its users into using 
> only free software? I think it's the distinction between the American 
> revolution and the French revolution; becoming too radical can be a 
> major problem.
>
> Shall we excise Wine? It's free software, but it's free software that 
> might, possibly, allow the user to use non-free software (of course, 
> they might be wanting to use a Windows-only bit of Free software; it's 
> not inconcievable, especially when it comes to gaming).
>
> Let's, hypothetically, say we developed a fork of Wine that only 
> allowed Free software to be run (never mind the impracticality of 
> that). That would violate software freedom zero , that the user be 
> allowed to run his software as he will. Ironically, freedom to run an 
> interact with non-free software is essential to the freedom of software.
>
> I think that freedom is sufficient--that any Free package ought to be 
> included in the repositories, so far as is practical. It is not for us 
> to decide how the user runs his system; that would make the system 
> non-Free. Merely provide a high-quality, cohesive system comprising 
> solely Free software, and if the user wants to hang himself on 
> slavery's chains, let him.
>
> JB
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