Ubuntu is not free.

[lastexyle]

This "Free software only" ("free" meaning "GPL") mentality is exactly
what's holding Linux back and keeping it off the desktops of everyone
but enthusiasts. When people install an OS, they want it to "just
work." Ubuntu actually does that a heck of a lot better than Windows in
many cases (though it still needs a lot of work in others) partly
because of the inclusion of non-"free" software. My complaint is that
Ubuntu doesn't include enough non-"free" software by default (I still
have to go edit sources.list, and install some extra codecs to get
playback for the most common audio and video formats).

Additionally, this attitude alienates developers of proprietary
software which might otherwise have been ported to Linux, and you're a
fool if you think this is a good thing.

In a perfect world, all software would be GPL (though I'm honestly not
sure that it'd turn out being that great if it did happen for a number
of reasons) but the truth of the matter is, is that people need jobs,
to protect their intillectual property, or are just plain greedy, and
that's not going to change. Some software, drivers, firmware, etc. will
always be non-"free" (non-GPL) and if the linux community can't work
with that, then lots of people who don't have the time to learn, or
simply aren't good with computers will be left out in the cold and will
have to stick with Windows or OSX or at best buy something like Linspire
(all of which are non-"free" (GPL) as well as being non-free (money)).

The great thing about Open source, is that because of it, there are
different flavors availible. If you want to stick with only "free"
(GPL) software, you can use one of those. Ubuntu doesn't fit under that
category though; it's a user-friendly distribution mean to be able to be
used by everyone, and while it's not quite there, it's pretty damn
close. I personally feel that that is much bigger than some petty
politics, and will, in the end probably help the open source movement
more than the supposedly higher moral ground of using excluxivley GPLed
software.


-- 
lastexyle