Re: [GNU-linux-libre] review PureOS ISO

[Jean Louis]

Oh Zlatan, I am sorry to offend your feelings.


On Wed, Nov 09, 2016 at 12:01:33PM +0100, Zlatan Todoric wrote:
> > I see that on your website, you are selling notebooks. I don't know
> > nothing about them, and if you are calling them Librem, I just assume
> > they are without proprietary BIOS.
> 
> Please stop right now watering down this discussion about our hardware as
> focus here is not hardware that RYF but a Free software distribution - and
> only that.

The website puri.sm is focusing on sales of hardware, notebooks. I
guess there shall be nothing wrong with that observation, as it was
your group to set it up that way.

You are trying to promote a PureOS, as free software distribution, so
if you are really focusing on PureOS, than it is just my personal
opinion, that like other free software distributions, you should have
a separate website, where users of such website cannot be driven to
purchase notebooks that contain blobs and non-free firmware possibly,
and this I assume according  to what I have read on your website.

> > I have reviewed this FAQ here:
> > https://puri.sm/faq/
> > 
> > and I did not find anything in regards to BIOS. I have found on other
> > pages on your site, that you are basically still using blobs, like it
> > says here: https://puri.sm/posts/bios-freedom-status-nov2014/ and I
> > cannot know what is updated information.
> 
> Again, nothing to do with Free software distribution.

I am sticking to this:

Free System Distribution Guidelines (GNU FSDG)
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html

Section: Documentation

"All the documentation in a free system distribution must be released
under an appropriate free license. Additionally, it must take care not
to recommend nonfree software."

Let me tell you what happened to me simply, by going to the PureOS to
review it:

1) First, I have not used a mouse to click on your links in emails, I
simply used fingers. So, instead of going to your links on
puri.sm/somewhere, I went directly to puri.sm website. So, what I
found are sales of notebooks, and not PureOS. It says in the title
"High Quality GNU/Linux Laptops".

I have researched on your website about those laptops, and I found
they are not purely free, so PureOS is on not quite pure laptop.

Now back to the quote above:

"Additionally, it must take care not to recommend nonfree software".

While a laptop is not a software, it does contain software which is
not free, and by recommending a laptop, you are pushing non-free
softwarein hands of users.

This may not be big deal for you, it is big deal for me. I am not
buying it.

> > The focus is not on free software. The focus is on a notebook, that is
> > to reach the free software users and supporters.
> 
> The focus here is only on Free software OS. You can install Trisquel on our
> hardware and it will work out of the box, and it doesn't render it as
> nonfree distro because of the hardware.

The focus is where you put it, I have not designed your PureOS pages. If you
click on this link: https://puri.sm/pureos/ your pages speak of
notebooks. And my focus from thinking of operating system is drawn to
products. That is how it was intended in the first place.

As I don't find it bad, I just find that focus is moving users to
become clients to purchase laptops, to run the non-free blobs in the
laptops.

> > You are promoting free software distribution on the same domain where
> > you are selling non-free software to people.
> 
> We are not selling non-free software so stop the FUD.

OK, so you just sell the notebooks which have non-free software
inside. So, you are not selling non-free software, you give away for
free.

> > 2) Notebooks were chosen from beginning to have the proprietary blobs,
> > firmware, whatever, and you have offered them for sale before that has
> > been handled.
> 
> Not relevant for this discussion.

Well I guess that one is very relevant. When making a truly free
software distribution, you should not tell people to purchase
notebooks still having non-free blobs.

And your interest in becoming free software distribution, shall grow
when I am saying this to you, instead of it, you are rejecting my
comments.

You should rather say how you can improve the condition of those
notebooks, so that they are not delivered any more with non-free
software inside.

That way, at one point of time in future, you could say that you are
distributing free software distribution, without recommending non-free
software in the notebooks.

> > 8) The website for PureOS is not separate from a notebook sales
> > website. In fact sales are in the first focus on that domain. I don't
> > say you should not sell notebooks, I say that your focus is on sales
> > and much less focus on truly purely making a free software
> > distribution.
> 
> You're repeating yourself and I don't see how this is relevant to PureOS. As
> I said, would Trisquel become nonfree if we choose to sell it with our
> hardware?

No, but then you would not have a Trisquel website under your control,
so Trisquel is not promoting notebooks that have non-free blobs. You
see the difference?

Jean Louis
Geita, Tanzania