Hello Jim, Am Donnerstag, 17. März 2022, 00:00:52 CET schrieb Jim Henderson:
On Wed, 16 Mar 2022 22:57:55 +1030, Simon Lees wrote:
Like Richard I don't really think this sort of political activism is the current role of the openSUSE project but I think its a good thing that we support organizations such as FSFE who's roll it is to look at such things. I'd also be happy if a vote of members found that we should adjust our role / vision to include such things.
I think there is an element of open source software that is inherently political - the idea of "free as in freedom, not as in beer" is arguably inherently a political statement.
This comes up on occasion in the forums, where we specifically discourage political and religious topics - but there are times where some point out that open source is inherently political because it's all about freedom - and that can be a difficult line to navigate at times.
But I also see the point that you and Richard are making about the board's role here. I do think this is something that is bigger than the project, but the project's voice in this matter could be important, so a vote on an adjustment to the role and vision would seem appropriate to me.
I'm open to discuss adjustment of roles, but I feel in this case there is no need to: how are we supposed to advocate for openSUSE Linux if we can't advocate for policy that furthers that goal? The goal is clearly wider than just 'our' distribution, but it should not stop us from taking appropriate action.
One of the real challenges that we face is things like TPM and other such proprietary technologies that restrict user choice in operating system software choices. Championing user choice is something that, to me, would be appropriate for the project to do (whether it's the board doing it or a group of interested members doing it). Something like restricted choice in operating system selection in consumer hardware would seem to me to be a fight (or discussion) worth having.
True. TPM can be the trojan horse to lock free software out, if hardware comes in conjunction with proprietary protocols and systems. One more reason to protect users from preinstalled proprietary systems.... Cheers Axel