Hi, Michał! On 12/24/2012 12:51 PM, Michał Masłowski wrote: > > I think it does comply. This part of the FSDG seems relevant: > >> In general, something that helps people who already use nonfree >> software to use the free software better with it is acceptable, but >> something that encourages users of the free software to install >> nonfree software is not. >> >> For example, a free system distribution may have documentation for >> users setting up dual boot systems. It could explain how to access >> filesystems of the proprietary operating system, import settings from >> it, and so on. That would be helping people install a free system >> distribution on a machine which already has proprietary software, >> which is good.
Hmm. pilot-link doesn't help people install a free system on their `pilots' (at the very least, I believe it doesn't advertise such an option). >> What would be unacceptable is for the documentation to give people >> instructions for installing a nonfree program on the system, or >> mention conveniences they might gain by doing so. > > (I think these references to "documentation" instead of "software" are > not significant, these issues are more obvious to appear in > documentation.) > > I haven't used pilot-link, what I have read about it suggests that: > > - it's useful for users already using nonfree software on other machines Being useful for nonfree software users is not bad; being useless unless one uses nonfree software is. > - it might replace other nonfree software on the same machine, or make > it easier to move to a free system It makes it easier to move to a _nonfree_ system, for instance, to migrate the handheld data to PalmOS. It doesn't make it easier to move to a completely free system: as long as somebody uses it, she'll use proprietary software; and if she uses a PalmOS device and really wants to abandon it, she certainly already has some program to export her data, and it doesn't matter whether that program is free or not --- she once used some proprietary programs, and after the migration she'll use neither PalmOS, nor that whatever exporter. > - it refers to a nonfree operating system it works with > > I think the same arguments apply to binutils (Windows-specific tools) > and GRUB (dual-booting documentation explictly naming Windows). GRUB is definitely useful without Windows; so is binutils: even when configured with Windows as the host or the target, the executables can run on top of a free emulator (in theory. I don't think it is a good idea for a FSDG-compliant distro to provide development packages specifically targeted to proprietary systems). Pilot-link supports no free system to `-link' to. > Are there specific cases of pilot-link availability in Parabola > encouraging users to start using PalmOS or other nonfree software? I'm not sure how to reword this into a valid argument; perhaps it can be done, but the maintainers hardly should wait for a real life example in order to decide that the package encourages using proprietary software. _______________________________________________ Dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.parabolagnulinux.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
