On 12/06/2014 02:09 PM, Matteo Panella wrote:
> On 06/12/2014 14:24, hellekin wrote:
>> *** Well, the "wrong" with non-free, is that it's antisocial.
>
> Just to be clear: you're proposing to either publicly shame vendors
> _and_ users[1][2] or drop the non-free section altogether.
>
*** No I'm not. I'm proposing to call things for what they are. Given
the course of global human civilization, there's no time to play.
Non-free software is antisocial, as is antisocial to try and impose a
single totalitarian system, such as systemd.

The current "real world problem" you mention is not that you cannot run
free software on your computer, but that manufacturers that enable
running general purpose computing machines that support software freedom
are almost inexistent, except for a few well-identified ones, or
not-so-well identified ones that make difficult for users to indeed
choose what they can run on their supposedly own systems.

I'm writing on a Lenovo Thinkpad running gummiboot and systemd. I
cannot run a GRSecurity kernel because there's a vendor lock and who
knows what else in this stack that I cannot control, and it ends up
crashing. I cannot replace the BIOS with Libreboot because of a vendor
lock that imposes spying-on-users-by-default, and I have to disable a
lot of obscure features to stop the machine reporting my usage and
position to who knows whom, even if I'm running free software on top of
it and trying to preserve my privacy. I cannot use the internal Wifi
card without a non-free firmware, which means in my case that I don't
use it.

There are very well documented instances of many companies working with
surveillance systems, providing surveillance, sabotaging competition,
etc., for their own profit, and at the expense of the rest of society,
without mentioning slave work and non-technical aspects. Pardon my
insistence, but I don't see it a good thing to let corporations take
over the production of technology entirely and I consider it a duty to
enable user control of their computing needs.

Shunning players who are not helping software freedom is more legitimate
to me that being discretely shunned by corporations working together to
maintain control over the market for the account of unfettered global
surveillance.

But as Franco said, this discussion will become important *after* 1.0 is
released, and the spirit of the Debian project can continue without
users being coerced into using systemd.

>
> [1]: imagine you'd have to say that you're using packages from the
> "antisocial" section of the archive...
>
*** Indeed, you'd want to use other software, or pressure your hardware
vendor to enable free software developers to cooperate.

> [2]: also, the word "antisocial" is strongly loaded with nefarious
> connotations. Its widespread use dates back to dark periods in history
> when people which wouldn't fall in line with the ideas of those in
> charge would be branded as "antisocial individuals" and punished bitterly
>
*** Unfortunately, loads of very legitimate words are loaded with
nefarious connotations. For example, when I hear "Nobel Peace Prize", I
picture a man signing off an order to murder a child and the people
around him with a drone-shot missile for being the son of a person who
denounced the war crimes of this man, and call for a war against him.
I'm far from endorsing calling for wars, but I have a hell of a time
imagining peace in that context.

It is a prerogative of punitive power, or as we now call it: Orwellian
power, to reverse the meaning of words in order to impede proper
expression of ideas. I owe nothing to Italian fascists for using the
word antisocial to characterize their, or corporate behavior that
systematically destroys community, solidarity, and society. We are
society, they are its cancer. If we were to abandon words because
sociopaths have been splashing blood on them, we soon would become mute.

==
hk

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