Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Perfectionism

[Dima Krasner]

---- On Thu, 10 Nov 2016 16:15:09 +0200 Jeff F.<address@hidden> wrote ---- 

 > Le jeudi 10 novembre 2016 à 9:00 -0500, Julie Marchant a écrit : 
 > [...] 
 > 
 > There is absolutely no part of 
 > https://gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.en.html 
 > ...that says that a distro website cannot be part of another website. 
 > So your argument stands only on your personal opinion. 
 > 
 > 

IMHO, the excessive strictness reflected in the FSDG certification process is 
the root of many problems in the free software world and especially those that 
involve the FSF. It won't be very hard to demonstrate that most if not all 
FSDG-approved distros are incompliant, when *anything* counts as valid evidence 
(including things like "-debian", in version strings of server version strings 
sent by infrastructure servers).

The FSF loses its power, relevance and legitimacy when it does things with this 
strict, elitist attitude. Although I understand the ethical reasoning behind 
the FSF/RMS way of doing things, I believe that free software that can be 
embedded in proprietary software and free software made by a company that pays 
for this by selling hardware that depends on (some) non-free software is still 
better than proprietary software, for ethical (and technical) reasons. Such 
software doesn't instantaneously make the world 100% free as we'd like, but 
it's a slight move in the right direction and has value, especially when the 
ethical TODO is well-documented and visible to the users.

2c

Dima