[FSF India] RH, SuSE etc

[Mohit Agarwal]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2001 at 07:15:22PM +0530, Raju Mathur wrote:
> >>>>> "Khuzaima" == Khuzaima A Lakdawala <klak@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in> writes:
> 
>     Khuzaima> [snip]
> 
>     Khuzaima> Why are some GNU/Linux distributions considered
>     Khuzaima> "unethical" by some?  Well, because they add non-free,
>     Khuzaima> proprietary applications in the garb of "value
>     Khuzaima> addition". Basically, these are businesses which are
>     Khuzaima> trying to get a free ride on the "Linux bandwagon" and
>     Khuzaima> don't really have anything to do with the ideals of Free
>     Khuzaima> Software.
> 
> You may be right for some distributions, but that's not strictly
> correct.  Red Hat and SuSE, for example, produce large amounts of free
> source code while adding non-free proprietary applications to their
> distributions.  Sweeping generalisations (``Debian is good, everybody
> else is a thief'' variety) tend to make their containing arguments
> lose whatever merit they may have had.

Absolutely correct.  It's just like making statements without being
aware and, moreover, exhibiting unwillingness to find out, learn,
listen or reason.

Take a look at http://sources.redhat.com/ [*] and you'll find who
maintains (or helps in a big way to maintain) projects like glibc,
gcc, gdb just to name a few.

[*] It's a grossly `unethical' site and your browsers and even
operating systems might crash before loading the page.  Beware!
-- 
          mohit