Installing and newbies

[Graham Todd]

On Thu, 08 May 2008 15:14:50 -0500
Billie Walsh <bilwalsh at swbell.net> wrote:

> How can they NOT be included because they are "non-free" when they
> are FREE?
[snipped]

Because they are not free in the sense of freedom.

Ubuntu and Kubuntu are forks of Debian, and judge whether a piece of
software in roughly the same way.  See:

http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/philosophy

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

> There is no charge from the supplier for 
> their download and installation.

If you read the licence which comes with a lot of "Freeware", you will
see that the software does not come with the source code, nor does it
allow you to rewrite the source code making it better for the whole
user community.  It usually says something like "this software is to be
used under the terms of the same licence as the Windows operating
system" (although not always those words) which is no freedom at all.

This is the Linux way, and it makes the software free (as in no cost
AND freedom) and strengthens the user community.

-- 
Graham Todd