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

[John Sullivan]

I appreciate the concerns raised about the nonfree boot firmware on
machines sold by the same company leading development of PureOS. That is
a concern for RYF (and is a concern generally, of course, we want all
machines to be all free).

It is not a concern for FSDG endorsement, except insofar as materials
that are part of PureOS official infrastructure (including its home
page, bug tracker, etc) might be recommending or suggesting use of the
nonfree software. I haven't myself looked yet to see to what extent this
might be the case, but I think any such problem is easily solvable.
Merely being produced by the same company does not automatically make
such a connection. If Canonical, for example, wanted to produce
something based on Ubuntu that met the FSDG criteria, we would certainly
consider that.

With regard to browsers, the extension repository is an issue because it
opens inside the browser and prominently recommends nonfree extensions.
Users need to be able to decide once -- by installing an endorsed distro
-- that they don't want programs in their distro offering them nonfree
software to install. This is different from it being *possible* to
install nonfree software, which is of course the case on any general
purpose computer.

-john

-- 
John Sullivan | Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
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