On 5/8/19 12:55 PM, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote: >> The question in relation to your post is: What are the precise goals >> of the GNU "initiativ" (my terminology, explained in [1]) and how can they >> be >> measured and reached? What is having a "free operating system"? >> >> One that is is "available", or is "easily" availble, what does "easy" mean? >> As I wrote, GNU constitutes, as I see it, the components of a free operating system which is upstream to a lot of other great projects including, e.g., Debian.
So I suppose GNU is an "initiative", in your sense, in the same sense as Debian is - and it's "finished" in the same sense. But that means that it's *not* finished, since OSs need to be maintained to stay alive. As for the ultimate goals of something like the GNU project I can't speak for them, but I'd say a reasonable goal would be that it should be realistically feasible for *everybody* to choose to use only free software, on all kinds of software-equipped devices that people normally use. Which would mean at least computers and mobile devices. If we look at computers, we're not quite there - people can, most of the time, opt to use free software in their private lives, but will often be forced to use proprietary software at work. As for mobile devices, we're not there *at all*. It's definitely not realistically feasible for everybody to acquire devices with a free OS and run only free apps. That's part of the point Paul raised: We don't just need awareness about software freedom, we need actual software for people to use. Best Carsten
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