Ubuntu is not free.

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thu, 2006-07-13 at 08:21 -0500, Steve Kratz wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I understand perfectly, and so I'll try to make it more clear :
> > Let me remind what's the definition of free software, at 
> > least for the persons who believe that it's a matter of price 
> > : free as in freedom, and not free as something you don't 
> > have to pay for.
> > 
> 
> 
> But... If you strip out the things that make Ubuntu nice for "anyone" to
> use, you end up with a plain old kernel, where someone installs the
> disk, has 800x600 VESA graphics, no sound card support, no wireless at
> all, a web browser that can't access half of the web sites out there
> because of flash/java, and the user then says "This sucks" and
> re-installs Windows.

Please stop repeating this age-old meme. I hear it constantly and the
people repeating it never provide figures and facts to back up their
assertion, so it's as good as an old wives tale.

By repeatedly asserting it, you give life to it and then it becomes
real, and then people really might go back to Windows. It's also a
defeatist point of view.

Once again: there is nothing wrong with having decent hardware and
software support for Linux, we do not have to accept a world where we
can't have these things. But to have them we do not need to violate the
principles that made Linux what it is today and turn it into yet another
proprietary infested OS. All we have to do is tell the owners of
proprietary stuff to free it up and GET THEM TO DO IT.

alan