Ideological differences when representing Ubuntu in events.

[Dan Trevino]

On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 12:40 AM, Michael Lustfield
<mtecknology at ubuntu.com> wrote:
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> I've seen this argument so many times... I'm sure you've all seen my
> blog posting about it. In the tiny world I've seen of people that hold
> an opinion that doesn't fight one or the other I've seen it summed up
> as: ~'GNU is a tolerated evil. We all know RMS is petty and arrogant.
> However, you can't ignore the contribution GNU has made to FOSS.'
>

This is quite annoying.

The Ubuntu developers I know don't hope the GNU will "burn itself out"
and dont feel it is a "tolerated evil".  The whole position is so very
wrong i barely want to dignify it with a response.  But I will ...

There will always be disagreements within the free software family
(see this email).  There are some choices that RMS and the FSF may not
like.  And there are positions that Ubuntu and Canonical take that
they may disagree with.  Its also true that Debian and Fedora ship
with less "non-free" bits than Ubuntu, and that Ubuntu, standing on
the shoulders of those giants, has been much more successful with
mainstream users.

This has happened for many reasons, not the least of which is that
early on, Shuttleworth and the Ubuntu developers recognized that they
would have to make some tough choices.  This doesn't mean that the
ethos and purpose of the FSF are irrelevant or in any way at odds with
the ultimate goals of Ubuntu.

Don't believe me?

     "To the extent we make short-term compromises, for drivers or
firmware along the way,
     we see those as bugs, and ones that will be closed over time."

     http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/77

Simply saying "Tell them we are free because uname -a says GNU" is
pretty useless.  So is writing off the perceived valid concerns of the
more idealistic users of Linux, just because you don't like RMS.

Ubuntu has a "free software" education/marketing problem, both within
its community and externally.  The question is not how to make
ourselves feel better by dismissing free software questions.  The
question is why aren't we presenting the contributions that Ubuntu has
made in a public way, so that all the good work of Ubuntu-VE and
others is not ignored.

Dan
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Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Open Standards!