@mlinksva While having lunch I can't believe I overlooked the biggest reason for not going with FirefoxOS. It's not free software. "What?" you ask? "Look at the license." Yes, the software license is free but Mozilla has found a way to circumvent these four freedoms using trademark law instead. I don't mean the requirement to rename if modified - that's a non-issue, according to the FSF's Free Software Definition. I'm referring to the ability to redistribute exact copies (and I mean exact in every way, exactly as received from Mozilla with exactly zero modifications) at a cost or not cost. (Referring to freedom #2.) I blogged about it some time ago: http://jxself.org/mozilla_trademark.shtml and includes a link to a reply from the FSF. And to also quote from gnu.org, "As explained in our Free Software Definition, all four freedoms must be available on both a commercial and non-commercial basis. Mozilla's trademark policy serves to limit Freedom 2 to gratis distribution only, making the software nonfree." So unless/until Mozilla changes their trademark policy such that exact copies (exact in every way i.e., completely unchanged and identical) can be distributed with or without a charge then freedom #2 is being curtailed and I can't get behind that. Maybe others can but I want all four freedoms available. In full, including freedom #2.

Jason Self at 2015-01-28T20:42:41Z

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@jxself what would be a brief and accurate characterization of work by Replicant and FSF endorsed distros that could take place of phrase you quoted?

re Mozilla's stupid TM policy; if one buys the rest of the article's argument, that would imply IceTrollOS is the correct next step.

Mike Linksvayer at 2015-01-28T21:58:20Z

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True, although the article didn't seem to be pushing for people to fork FirefoxOS into IceCatOS or something but rather going with FirefoxOS. I would rather Mozilla change their trademark policy so as to preserve freedom 2 instead of forking. For the others, they are their own independent free standing distros. They may pull in software from other places but then so does practically every other distro. Trisquel, for example, maintains things they call Helpers to make changes to the programs that they pull in (which come from places other than just Ubuntu.) They also make it work better by improving accessibility by replacing accessiblity-poor programs used by upstream with different ones (accessibility being an important thing for the project), adding or turning on privacy-enhancing things, writing new programs, and etc (The exact nature and extent of everything that's done can be found in the public git repository.) Characterizing these distros as simply "X with the non-free stuff removed" makes it seem like something rote and seems to discount all of the other work that's done as well.

Jason Self at 2015-01-28T22:24:58Z

The article isn't pushing for a fork due to the TM policy because it explicitly calls out the TM policy as being less bad than proprietary software bits (I have to guess the author discounts its impact on freedom 2, they have been around far too long for nobody to have made the argument to them). Or so I would guess. In any case I wasn't saying they did, I was saying that if one buys the rest of their argument and agrees the TM policy is unacceptable, forking FirefoxOS is the logical next step.

I'm still looking for a brief, accurate characterization of what Replicant and free distros, or a specific free distro, does that could replace quoted text. AFAICT there isn't really one in the obvious places, eg http://www.replicant.us/about.php and https://trisquel.info/en or https://trisquel.info/en/faq

I think it'd be great if Trisquel called out ways takes into account ethical concerns about software beyond freedom, instead of the super generic "for home users, small enterprises and educational centers." !

Mike Linksvayer at 2015-01-28T22:39:23Z

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