On 12/23/2010 6:41 PM, Doug wrote:
Am 23.12.2010 13:09, schrieb Kostas Boukouvalas:
What are the Free Software policies inside the openSUSE project?
The only thing FSF notices that separates openSUSE Project from the Emacs Church is "openSUSE offers its users access to a repository of nonfree software" [1].
Could this change? I mean, could this repository be ousted from openSUSE but still being accessible by openSUSE users if they want to? Instructions could be given in forums outside the wiki or the official openSUSE community sites.
Something like packman but with no help from the community. It would also be a chance for business for someone that wants also to help freedom but on the other hand to help a user in the extreme case that some hardware cannot work with Free Software and she wants it to work "the very moment". Haeh, that all sounds ridiculous.
"Something like packman but with no help from the community" Who is the community? Who is openSUSE? openSUSE creates a distribution (oss). There is an additonal repository where nobody is forced to use it (non-oss). I'm a strong believer in open source but if that is something the FSF sees as an issue I don't want to have to do with them.
Wolfgang Rant on: It has finally come to a boil with me! I'm so damned sick of hearing Linux people disdain anything with a copyright, or anything one might actually have to pay for! In the first place, practically every older Linux distro was _sold_ to the computing public: SuSE and RedHat in particular. In the second place, all you folks who are so gaga about FOSS--how many of you are dissecting the software and rewriting it, or adding to it, or doing anything at all except _using_ it? Not even 1%, I'd bet. I'm especially up in arms with Debian, who won't even let you have a nice clean Firefox or Thunderbird. They've stolen those, changed maybe a word somewhere, and renamed it, and claim that _now_ it's FOSS! Thank God for distros
On 12/23/2010 08:18 AM, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote: like MINT, which make no bones about making all sorts of useful software available, no matter where it comes from. And for the ones who at least don't condemn it, like Debian does. :ffo tnaR
--doug
Commerial software has it's place. But the traditional economic model for software development and distribution is out of touch and counter productive today. The proof is in the pudding and can't be disputed any more except by the ignorant. And you can't exactly call me allergic to paying for goods or services. I at least, would pay MORE, for the freedom to do what I want. I've paid thousands to have developers work on open source software to add features I needed, as well as spent my own time which isn't free, and made the results equally free. It's definitely about the money but only in the long view. In the short view I paid a lot for something that's free. (http://code.google.com/p/aljex-client) Yes if you look you'll see I work for a company that sells software. No contradiction. It's not open source but each customer gets the source if they buy the software, or they pay a subscription fee for the service instead of buying the software. In the subscription case they don't get the source since it's running on our servers, but even in that case no one is locked-in. Whether they buy or rent, we import and export their data using dirt simple csv or whatever generic format the customer wants. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org