On 7 December 2016 at 14:13, Bruno Friedmann <bruno@ioda-net.ch> wrote:
On mercredi, 7 décembre 2016 13.57:59 h CET Axel Braun wrote:
Dear project members,
background of the question is a discussion I recently had with R. Stallman. According to his point of view, openSUSE is not free software, as unfree components are installed.
Lets take a look at the definition of freedom [1]. Free software allows you to - execute a program - distribute it - analyze and modify the source code - re-distribute the modified program.
This matches for the most part the license for openSUSE, see /etc/YaST2/ licenses/base/license.txt : ... With the exception of certain files containing the “openSUSE” trademark discussed below, the license terms for the components permit you to copy and redistribute the component. With the potential exception of certain firmware files, the license terms for the components permit you to copy, modify, and redistribute the component, in both source code and binary code forms. This agreement does not limit your rights under, or grant you rights that supersede, the license terms of any particular component. ....
Except for the part ' With the potential exception of certain firmware files' , this gives us all required freedoms. Firmware is usually tricky....so looking at this I found some Firmware files with the License string 'openSUSE-Firmware', and [2] on the net (but not sure how up-to-date this page is). Does anyone know the rationale behind openSUSE-Firmware license?
openSUSE comes by default with the OSS and non-OSS repository. Richards remark here was that files from non-OSS are installed without making the user aware about the nature of these unfree components. This is true, although the permission is asked for every of the two installed programs (AdobeICCProfiles and a gstreamer-fluendo-mp3). Most users do probably not realize the point of proprietary software here. And the benefit of AdobeICC is limited if you are not using color management.
I see the bias between free software and useability: If you desperately need some proprietary firmware to get your hardware up and running, you will see the freedom aspect only in the second row. As a distribution, we should make sure that a wide range of hardware is supported.
On the other hand, and as openSUSE explains free software in its flyers (without stating THAT oS is free), we should try to install only free components in the first glance.
But we could leave the user the choice (during installation) to include non- free componentes / non-oss repo. By this we can make sure that exotic software as well gets supported, if we separate the non-free Firmware into the non-OSS Repo.
Does that sound reasonable? Discussion please! Axel
[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html [2] https://de.opensuse.org/Firmware
Ok just 2 words (or a bit more :-)
mp3 and non-oss were there due to high demand of users in the past at least. Should we change this default, why not, did you raise your hand to handle all requests of users wanting to play their crap ?
-firmware : hopefully distributed from upstream, and even if not being free as we would like, not distributing them and making installing openSUSE harder than others would just be a non sense. Sorry in that case, once openhardware will have won the battle we will be able to shift our position, otherwise, the first things we need is offering a pragmatic and well balanced path to people to enjoy freedom. Being a bit too bigot create the risk to have users that will tell us (well they won't talk about it) that they just choose the things that work for them. (A Windows surface, a Apple xPad, an android + crap things etc).....
--
Bruno Friedmann Ioda-Net Sàrl www.ioda-net.ch Bareos Partner, openSUSE Member, fsfe fellowship GPG KEY : D5C9B751C4653227 irc: tigerfoot
Hi, At our SFD events, some people did complain that they could not accept some licences at the very beginning (at installation) and not being nagged every now and then. This also happens when there are updates and need to validate licences.... There are ethics and then what do you do in practice for non free licences.... Having said that, we survived so far. Best, Jimmy -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org