Here's my understanding of vrms-
Debian has their "main" repository which they claim is all free software and
then "contrib" and "non-free" repositories which have their respective
freedom issues - either non-free dependencies or data or maybe actually being
non-free. Debian claims contrib and non-free are "not part" of Debian, but
they advertise and document it all over the place, so as the GNU.org "Why we
don't endorse common systems" page at
http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#Debian page it says "this does
too much to steer users towards proprietary software."
VRMS checks to see if the user has anything has installed anything from
contrib or non-free, which would be wonderful if the main section was what
they actually said it is. The reality is much of Debian's main includes
software that does not jibe with the FSF's definition. Furthermore Debian
applies standards to documentation as well, while the FSF's position is that
things like documentation do not necessarily have to be freely editable for
example - they're focused on software.
For example, Debian used to include the upstream Linux kernel (with
proprietary blobs) in their "main" repository, so they effectively broke
their own rules to keep non-free anything out of main. They use a libre
kernel now as far as I can tell, but, I think there are other packages in
their main.
Trisquel is fully-libre distribution by FSF standards, not Debian standards.
The complete info is found at
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines#vrms
and http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnewsense-users/2007-02/msg00027.html
VRMS checks things against Debian Free Software Guidelines, Trisquel is not
bound by them. Sometimes DFSG intersects with the FSF guidelines, but
Trisquel doesn't include any software in our repositories that are non-free
or recommend, encourage, or install non-free software (and we're committed to
removing any if they are found) so the VRMS package is just not necessary so
there's no way to "accidentally" install non-free software if you stick to
Trisquel's repository.
If we were to design a tool that checks to see if you've installed anything
outside of Trisquel's repository that would be potentially-misleading as
well, because there's plenty of free software not in the repositories. Heck,
I write some in-house tools for myself and release the source code... to
myself. Would such a tool yell at me for running "non-free" software?
Personal responsibility is the key here, and, when in doubt, the forum or the
IRC are more-than-happy to help identify whether a program not in the
repositories is free software or not.
