Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jul 14, 2008, "Mark Haney" <mhaney at 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?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}