Forum moderation
one more thing: it is related to the thread itself. There are people who want to ban users simply because they talk about "non-free software". The problem is, the definition of "free software" is a little too vague. For me Debian is free, for other people it is not.
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În 2013-12-22 22:43, name at domain a scris:
> one more thing: it is related to the thread itself. There are people
> who want to ban users simply because they talk about "non-free
> software". The problem is, the definition of "free software" is a
> little too vague. For me Debian is free, for other people it is not.
Free Software is defined in the Free Software Definition written by RMS
for the GNU Project and first published in the 80's. It is the
definition used by the Trisquel project for free software (as stated in
the Trisquel Community Guidelines) and any other (personal) definition
of free software is out of the scope of this community.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
A distribution is not only one piece of software, it's a collection of
software. For a certain piece of software it is clear if it's free or
not based on the licenses of all its components and the Free Software
Definition. If theoretically (considering the software licenses) and
practically (considering the technicalities of building and running a
modified version) the user has all the four rights defined in the Free
Software Definition on the entire software she runs in compiled, binary
format, then it's free software.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
For a software distribution (a system distribution is a subtype of
software distribution) you need to check all the software that is
distributed if it's free software to decide whether the distribution is
free or not. If the distribution also includes non-free software even in
other repositories which are maintained by the distribution project and
which are documented by the distribution project, that that distribution
is not solely a distribution of free software, thus it's a not
(entirely) a free distribution. (I call it a corrupt distribution;
corrupted by the convenience of proprietary software above software
freedom). The FSF has compiled a list of guidelines for a free software
distribution (it might not be complete) based on the issues found
already in the common distributions.
Examples:
Firefox Add-ons (found at addons.mozilla.org) is a software distribution
which is not free, because it includes nonfree extensions for Firefox.
In a similar manner, Debian GNU/Linux is a system distribution which is
not free, because it includes nonfree firmware and other nonfree
software.
--
Tiberiu C. Turbureanu
Președinte, Fundația Ceata
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One of my big issues with this forum is the attack on permissive licenses even though they are free software. Most of the people here want everything to be GPL and will support it blindly even though it doesn't fit the scope of many projects and is considered too restrictive by modern developers.
The fears. The worries. The finger pointing. It makes you wonder if anyone is working on getting the next version of Trisquel out at this point. This site is turning into a glorified message board spreading evangelism and arguments with those who question it.
my suggestion: rename, or specifically describe, the (en) users-forum as technical support only! create a new OFFTOPIC forum for all "discussion" topics, not directly related to technical support issues.
Probably would be better to actually start a Trisquel OS technical support forum; and allow this way-out-there-in-la-la-land bashing party to be moved into a back room, hidden from public view. :-)
Too many of the discussions are becoming laughable, and business people have begun to drop by to be entertained by the kids here. Unfortunately, that was an actual discussion at a recent meeting in the computer lab. Lack of management and supervision leads to chaos... but at least it is entertaining!