Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Perfectionism

[Dima Krasner]

---- On Thu, 10 Nov 2016 19:09:55 +0200 Jean Louis  wrote ---- 
>I really don't see strictness there. And I fully understand that 
>somebody who did not research the definitions of words, and in general 
>about free software -- that such person may get impression of 
>strictness. It requires learning.

Many people who don't know what free software and the FSF are see discussions 
like this one and may get the false impression of strictness.

>Finally, the GNU GPL license, the free software world's license, is 
>according to media most widely used license for software, in the whole 
>world. If so, then those developers did understand the reasons and 
>purposes of the free software. 

Don't forget more permissive, non-copyleft licenses like MIT and Apache have 
conquered the open source scene (e.g. GitHub) and this trend also affects free 
software, as a subset of open source software.

When developers run away from free software and the GPL because they don't like 
the free software movement's attitude for whatever reason (read: bad first 
impression due to TL;DR of fsf.org), we lose man hours and working hands.

>The words debian or things like "-debian" are nowhere forbidden to say 
>or mention. 

I don't see why a distro cannot put a link to Purism's site on its homepage, 
even if it's unclear whether or not it is endorsed by the developers. After 
all, Trisquel's packages mention Ubuntu in many places.

>You should put attention on differentiation, and not equation. Not 
>everything is equal to everything. Debian GNU/Linux as distribution 
>and movement is not equal to things like "-debian". 

And putting a link to a site does not mean endorsement.

>Further, with the generalization, you do not bring up arguments. 

First impression matters. The FSF has always been bad in PR matters, IMHO. 
Again, as I said before: those who don't know the free software movement might 
see mailing list threads like this one, their length and the arguments 
discussed, then decide the entire free software movement is a bunch of stubborn 
people they cannot work with.

Dima