Is Ubuntu commited to free software?

[Martin Owens]

On Wed, 2010-06-09 at 16:08 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> 
> "Danny Piccirillo" <danny.piccirillo at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >Yes, the free software only option is there, but isn't entirely free. That's
> >what linux-libre is for. Linux libre should be the kernel for the free
> >software install. Mainline Linux is not free because it includes binary-only
> >firmwares hidden as source code files (or blobs)
> >
> >
> Then these are bugs. They should be fixed. If the effort that's going into a political kernel fork were put into high quality patches more progress would be made. I suspect it's not because the fork is more about taking away people's freedom to run non-free code than it is about fixing problems with inadvertent problems with non-free bits in the kernel. 

Scott, I absolutely am in agreement with you on the issue. Binary blobs
are talked a lot about but hardly anyone seems to want to talk about
solving the problems.

Just like all the other non-free[1] problems we have, few people want to
put the economic resources into play in order to solve them. How many
people pledge money to gnash even though the guy comes to UDS? a handful
I bet, and we don't even inform our users that there is an option to
invest in these projects from our platform.

We do a poor job at economic creativity.

Martin,

[1] ubuntu-restricted-extras is only partly non-free, most of the codec
code is Free Software and is excluded because of patent fear, not
because it's closed.