Re: [Hampshire] Iceweasel

On Monday 13 Nov. 2006 19:19:26 Tim wrote:
>
[a very big snip]
>> >
>> > Hi Tim, I think you chose the wrong distro to try and break the GPL.
>> > Perhaps you should move to Freespire (Lindows) :-) . You will just have
>> > to download firefox direct from their website and agree to the license
>> > terms. The APT application you love was written by people who believe if
>> > FLOSS and maintained by the community so you can download for free. It
>> > is up to Mozilla to align themselves with the open source community.
>> >
>> > You have brought up an excellent topic though, thanks. We all need
>> > reminding now and again why Free, Libre, Open Source software and the
>> > GPL are so important and this is a real world example. If you want to be
>> > tied in and pay for your software, even if some of it is crap, well use
>> > the operating system that comes with you new PC (you don't really have a
>> > choice, other than to say no to the license agreement and ask for you
>> > money back, which there is no guarantee you'll get).
>> >
>> > John.
> Hi John
>
> I'm glad you are enjoying the topic, it seem to have woken everybody up!!
>
> I can understand the philiosophy of Debian, but not everybody that uses debian
> plays by those rules. If Debian were that strict on their philosophy then
> they would lock the OS so that only genuine debian packages can be installed.
> But they don't they allow the user to make the choice, but by allowing user
> to install altenative non-free software they are breaking their own ethos,
> which in turn weakens their arguements in a situation like this. Debian need
> to make a choice of which side of the fence it stands the "GNU side" or
> the "free but not really free" side, at the moment they are sitting on the
> fence by saying we support GNU and build our software that way but if you
> (the user) want to go against our ethos you can we don't care, show little
> respect for the philosophy.
>

au contraire! Debian is true to their philosophy. You have the freedom
to choose.