Novell and SuSE

On Jan 17, 2004, at 3:42 PM, Derek Neighbors wrote:

> On Sat, 2004-01-17 at 10:35, Chris Gehlker wrote:
>
>> I think this is exactly right. It's just that the appeal of the 'Four
>> Freedoms' comes from our tendency to visualize the term 'user' as
>> applying to actual organic people. If you read "The Free Software
>> Definition" mentally substituting the word 'organization' whenever
>> 'user' appears, you are very likely to ask yourself "What is the point
>> of this? Is this much better than Microsoft's EULA?" And yet it is
>> clear that in practice the term 'user' does refer to the organization,
>> not the poor sod stuck in a cubicle.
>
>
> I don't think you can lump it like that. At this point I the FSF has
> chosen to go by legal entity. If you are a home user, you as an
> individual is the user. If you are company, you as a company is a
> user. You can not globally substitute user/organization because of
> this.
>
> I think your complaint is that of many labor parties. That capitalists
> treat their employees as less than human. I tend to agree with you.
> However, this is not the FSF's fault, this a defect of a capitalist
> system that drives at profit at all cost.

I disagree here. The FSF could amend the GPL to simply require that
organizations provide their employes with source code for any of the
GPL derived programs that they are required to use in the performance
of their jobs. They could also require them to inform their employes
that they have the right to redistribute such programs. This might
discourage some corporations from using any GPL derived code but it
would certainly be consistent with the Free Software Definition.

>
>> Certainly. Bruce Parens is proposing UserLinux precisely because he
>> believes that Debian's insistence on excluding closed source drivers
>> is
>> doing more harm than good. It is an issue that merits serious
>> discussion.
>
> I don't think that is Bruce's driving factor in total.

You are correct. I should have said "one of the things that Bruce
Parens is proposing for UserLinux..." It was not the only or even the
most important part of his proposal.