Arthur Pemberton wrote:

How is it that Fedora is not on this list?
http://www.gnu.org/links/links.html#FreeGNULinuxDistributions

gNewsSense just recently came around and they are on the list. What's
up with that?



Personally, I think the demand by Stallman, and others to call Linux
'GNU/Linux' is just stupid and childish. As if changing the name will
change the nature of the system. While I am an advocate of free and
open source software, and agree with some of his ideas, Stallman needs a
bloody valium. To me he's a lot like Jack Thompson, foams at the mouth
over the silliest things.


I know this has nothing to do with said thread particularly, I just
wanted to vent my spleen on this. While said list is great, it doesn't
really tell the whole story. Until we get comparable open source
equivalents that become mainstream, there will be a need for adding
proprietary 'non free' bits to a system. It's all a matter of what can
you live with.




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Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
(828) 350-2415

Call (866) ERC-7110 for after hours support

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On Jul 14, 2008, "Mark Haney" <mhaney@ercbroadband.org> wrote:

> Personally, I think the demand by Stallman, and others to call Linux
> GNU/Linux' is just stupid and childish. As if changing the name will
> change the nature of the system.

Whereas the demand by others to call the GNU system Linux isn't?

RMS actually has a social reason for his request. What is the reason
behind those who refuse?

> While I am an advocate of free and open source software, and agree
> with some of his ideas, Stallman needs a bloody valium.

Honestly, I don't think he's the one who needs valium. He doesn't go
out of his way shouting people into silence just because they offer
opinions and facts he doesn't like. That would have been too cheap a
shot.

> Until we get comparable open source equivalents that become
> mainstream, there will be a need for adding proprietary 'non free'
> bits to a system.

Even if you're right, I get the impression that you mean 'system' as
'operating system' rather than 'a machine that requires that piece of
software to work'.

There's no logic behind saying such pieces of software must be part of
the operating system. They don't have to, and driver disks for
Windows are proof of that. If even Microsoft can get away with it,
why do we have to help unethical vendors force this garbage onto *all*
of our users?

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On Jul 14, 2008, Anders Karlsson <anders@trudheim.co.uk> wrote:

> Or - do what was suggested you do a Looooong time ago, take your
> argument upstream and it'll filter down to Fedora eventually.

What upstream are you talking about? I assume you're so misinformed
that you mean it's the kernel Linux upstream, but there's far more to
in that that. Fedora chooses to add various pieces of non-Free
firmware to the distro, in addition to those that the kernel ships.
Your suggestion doesn't make sense. Please get some information and
some valium before venting out frustration at someone who was just
answering a user's question.

> Thank you for your understanding.

I wish I could reciprocate :-)

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Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com> writes:
> RMS actually has a social reason for his request. What is the
> reason behind those who refuse?

Respect for all the other organizations and authors who have
contributed to the packages within the various Linux-based
distributions, yet who do not get credited in the name "GNU/Linux" ?

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--- On Mon, 7/14/08, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler@chello.at> wrote:

> From: Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler@chello.at>
> Subject: Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?
> To: fedora-list@redhat.com
> Date: Monday, July 14, 2008, 3:47 AM
> Antonio Olivares <olivares14031 <at> yahoo.com>
> writes:
> > A Because Fedora includes Firmware and those guys
> don't.
>
> Bullsh*t!
Cool
>
> BLAG 70000 ships:
> * the original Fedora 7 kernels as the default and
> kernel-libre only as an
> option,
> * the following firmwares: asterisk-firmware,
> atmel-firmware, ivtv-firmware,
> iwl3945-firmware, iwl4965-firmware, iwlwifi-firmware (old
> version of
> iwl3945-firmware), ql2100-firmware, ql2200-firmware,
> ql23xx-firmware and
> ql2400-firmware, all with "License: Redistributable,
> no modification permitted"
> * zd1211-firmware which claims to be GPLv2, but with no
> source available.
>
> So the only difference between Fedora and BLAG in their
> current state is that
> BLAG is 2 releases out of date, which also implies there
> are no security
> updates from Fedora anymore for the software they ship, and
> I wouldn't rely on
> BLAG for security updates if I were you. For example, there
> is no bind update
> for the recent DNS security issue, nor any other updates
> since June 13. I
> consider it completely irresponsible to recommend a
> distribution whose "current
> release" has not received ANY security updates for a
> month!
>
> Kevin Kofler
>
> --

I do not have BLAG installed, but it sure was good to find out what they include Thanks Kevin. I did not know what they included. I only wondered why it was more freer than Fedora.

Regards,

Antonio




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On Mon, 2008-07-14 at 07:40 -0400, Mark Haney wrote:

> Personally, I think the demand by Stallman, and others to call Linux
> 'GNU/Linux' is just stupid and childish. As if changing the name will
> change the nature of the system. While I am an advocate of free and
> open source software, and agree with some of his ideas, Stallman needs
> a bloody valium. To me he's a lot like Jack Thompson, foams at the
> mouth over the silliest things.

While I personally think RMS is, well, let's say over zealous and leave
it at that... He is what I'd call a necessary evil. He swings the
pendulum so far the one direction that it keeps the whole thing
balanced. Irritating as he and his fellows may be, they do serve a
needed purpose.

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Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler <at> chello.at> writes:

>
> Antonio Olivares <olivares14031 <at> yahoo.com> writes:
> > A Because Fedora includes Firmware and those guys don't.
>
> Bullsh*t!
>
> BLAG 70000 ships:
[gmane tells me to prune]

I am the maintainer of BLAG and I basically agree with what you've said above.

The 70000 release was done before linux-libre was done. Moving forward we've
removed all the non-free bits we can find.

BLAG "always" has updated releases, but they are just called "alpha" or "beta"
and used by the BLAG community though they weren't linked on the front page. We
do have updated releases--oftentimes I have releases ready based on fedora
testing even before fedora has done their final release. The repositories are
set up before fedora releases their stable version too.

http://wiki.blagblagblag.org/Roadmap

Last night, I pushed out 90000, based on Fedora 9, so it is now linked on our
front page. I will be doing more "release early often" of 'stable' releases to
address your legitimate concerns.

As for the DNS issue, it compels me to make a confession of a sin against Free
Software. I've been running djbdns the whole decade, not BIND! Thankfully,
djbdns is now in the public domain.

Thanks,

-Jeff

P.S. I'm posting via gmane since i'm not on this list, and the turing-test word
is "subverts" jejeje.

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On Jul 14, 2008, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler@chello.at> wrote:

> Antonio Olivares <olivares14031 <at> yahoo.com> writes:
>> A Because Fedora includes Firmware and those guys don't.

> Bullsh*t!

> BLAG 70000 ships:
> * the original Fedora 7 kernels as the default and kernel-libre only as an
> option,

Big surprise, BLAG 70000 pre-dates kernel-libre.

> * the following firmwares: asterisk-firmware, atmel-firmware, ivtv-firmware,
> iwl3945-firmware, iwl4965-firmware, iwlwifi-firmware (old version of
> iwl3945-firmware), ql2100-firmware, ql2200-firmware, ql23xx-firmware and
> ql2400-firmware, all with "License: Redistributable, no modification permitted"
> * zd1211-firmware which claims to be GPLv2, but with no source available.

So this is like gNewSense 2.0 shipping linux-ubuntu-modules containing
non-Free Software. It was against their policies, it was eventually
fixed.

If you find any such problems in BLAG 80000 (never formally released)
or BLAG 90000 (released easier today), please report them. Likewise
gNewSense 2.0, dyne:bolic, UTUTO-XS, Musix GNU+Linux. Those guys are
serious about it, they have public commitments to that, but like
everyone else they can make mistakes.

As I said before, (honest) policy matters more than the exact bits
that get shipped, and fixing policy is much easier than fixing
software.

> I consider it completely irresponsible to recommend a distribution
> whose "current release" has not received ANY security updates for a
> month!

Whatever irresponsibility you perceive here is probably just laziness
of publishing announcements about software that has long been
available. BLAG 70000 was old, indeed, and it's a shame it was still
regarded as the latest stable release in spite of the (as of
yesterday) unannounced BLAG 80000 and 90000.

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On Jul 14, 2008, DJ Delorie <dj@delorie.com> wrote:

> Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com> writes:
>> RMS actually has a social reason for his request. What is the
>> reason behind those who refuse?

> Respect for all the other organizations and authors who have
> contributed to the packages within the various Linux-based
> distributions, yet who do not get credited in the name "GNU/Linux" ?

Again, circular reasoning. You're talking about GNU+Linux-based
distributions. You're absolutely correct that some don't get credited
by GNU+Linux, but how is that a logical reason to credit the smaller
contributor Linux and not the larger contributor GNU? This is covered
in the FAQ, BTW, starting at
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#many

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Alexandre Oliva <aoliva <at> redhat.com> writes:
> If you find any such problems in BLAG 80000 (never formally released)
> or BLAG 90000 (released easier today), please report them.

Here's some I found at a quick glance:

http://www.blagblagblag.org/90000/BLAG/RPMS.fedora/zd1211-firmware-1.4-1.noarch.rpm
Yes, it says it's GPLv2. Now try looking at the "source code"... See also the
Fedora review request (where I raised that point, wondering if this is legal to
redistribute at all):
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=221675#c17

http://www.blagblagblag.org/90000/BLAG/RPMS.fedora/midisport-firmware-1.2-1.noarch.rpm
Claims to be GPLv2, but only the firmware loader is GPLv2 (actually dual GPLv2
or BSD). The package also contains firmware files (in /lib/firmware) under the
following license:
> The firmware files (*.ihx) are copyrighted by Midiman, and can be used
> and redistributed only as part of this package.
See:
http://usb-midi-fw.cvs.sourceforge.net/usb-midi-fw/midisport-firmware/LICENSE?revision=1.1&view=markup

http://www.blagblagblag.org/90000/BLAG/RPMS.kriehn/pdftk-1.41-5.fc9.i386.rpm
pdftk was dropped from Fedora for licensing reasons:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=236310
The files have since been fixed not to claim to be "confidential and
proprietary", but the new license is still not acceptable because it forbids
use in a nuclear facility. If this is not Free enough for Fedora, how come it
is Free enough for BLAG?

http://www.blagblagblag.org/90000/BLAG/RPMS.kriehn/msttcore-fonts-2.0-3.fc9.prof_k.noarch.rpm
Kept the best one for the end. Does this really need a comment?

Kevin Kofler

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