As anyone who has read other posts on this blog will know I feel quite strongly about software freedom. I try to use exclusively free software as far as I possibly can. However, unfortunately I do still use some propreitary software, for various reasons.
Nonetheless, I wish to strive to become better in this respect. Recently, I took a look at the 100% free software distribution gnewsense. Thing is, I’m still rather undecided about whether non-free firmware is a problem (topic for a future blogpost maybe) and gnewsense breaks the network cards on both my pcs, rendering it useless for me, until I buy new network cards of course 
(It also means that I have no compiz, due to graphics card firmware, and the fact that glx has been stripped out (this annoys me, no truly free 3D acceleration yet :S), but I can live without this. The internet, I basically can not).
And, there is also the fact that my belief in the importance of free software has been wavering a bit (I know it is important, I’ve just been wondering how important – I’ll elaborate more in athoer blog post). But, I decided I was at a point where I wanted to try to remove all the tradiotional non-free software. By this I mean software that is regared by everyone by non-free, is not GPL’d etc. In fact most distributions have this content in a separate repository.
On Ubuntu (which I use on my main PC), this software is put into the multiverse. I decided today that I would cut myself off from this repository completely. It should be no harm for me, as I do not use any of these apps, flash and java were installed, but only for other people (gnash and icedtea ftw). However, the thing that is really annoying me is that by disabling multiverse, it is not only non-free software that I can not download, it is also perfectly free software with some sort of legal problem (patents, DMCA). The two groups of software are not the same thing for me (being a freedom lover and patent and DMCA hater), so it is a great inconvenience if the two are just lumped together!!!!!!
I want to be able to have all free software enabled (including that with patent issues etc.) but no non-free software. With ubuntu, I can’t do this – all I can do is pick debs out of multiverse by hand! For this reason, I’m thinking of switching to a distro that does not lump non-free and possibly troublesome together, the obvious choice, I think would be Debian (Sid, I think). Already, I had realised I would be comfortable with debian (I use it on another machine), but given that ubuntu is considered more user friendly and will do anything Debian will do, I had no incentive to switch. Now I do!
I wonder if I can update my current hardy installation to Sid. Its probably not advisable, but given that I have a fallback Kubuntu partion, I might just give it a go, for the hell of it.
Another thing I was wondering, is that I do decide to go freedom crazy (and hate non-free firmware). Then what distro would I choose? Not gnewsense I don’t think, because that doesn’t ship the free software that ubuntu lumps in multiverse. Annoyingly, there doesn’t seem to be a freefree distro based on pure debian. Maybe gnewsense could be tweaked to be based on debian (project for the summer holdiays maybe).
Okay, I just spoke to the gnewsense guys, and it would probably be easier to create a “free multiverse repo”. So, I might not switch to Debian afterall. Then again I might. And everything could change if I manage to buy a new ethernet card. Watch this space 
Self referencial note: This blog is almost like a conversation with myself. I either leave too long before writing or am still making up my mind whilst I’m writing. The latter is definitely better though.
8 comments
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May 8, 2008 at 4:47 pm
fophillips
paludis (alternative package manager for Gentoo) offers license masking. You put the licenses you want to accept (or disallow) in a licenses.conf and it will only install software with those licenses. You can also provide rules for specific packages, so if you really, really need non-free package evil-software/X you can add “evil-software/X evil_license” to licenses.conf so you can install it without inadvertently installing more non-free packages.
May 9, 2008 at 10:52 am
Ben Webb
Now, that is a really nice idea. Maybe I’ll give gentoo a try sometime. A couple of things though, I don’t want to compile from source (does gentoo have an option for installing binaries), and I want all free licenses (presumably there will be a pre-made licenses.conf file for that). At the moment, I am most familiar with debian based distributions, but it would be nice to try something different.
May 9, 2008 at 1:00 pm
libervis
You’re making an excellent point about multiverse. It also reminds me of the annoyance of people sometimes saying how GNU/Linux doesn’t misses media codecs (while they’re actually just not all installed by default) yet we have full Free Software support for that – it’s just the patent issues which spoil the picture, and that’s only in *some* countries.
I for one just have multiverse enabled and I take what I need from there and mostly ignore the rest. Occasionally when I look for something and am not sure I can see in the properties dialog if this is from multiverse.
I was using Debian Sid for a while and it was good until I did a dist-upgrade. Maybe I was just out of luck, but not being able to boot afterwards and not being very motivated to fix such basic problems I ended up going back to Ubuntu.
So aside from a possible gNewSense with free-multiverse, I’m not really sure it can get any better than Ubuntu.. maybe Debian Testing as a middle ground of stability between sid and stable and with the usual Debian’s repo classification, if you don’t mind a little older packages.
Cheers
May 9, 2008 at 3:37 pm
fophillips
Ben, there isn’t an example licenses.conf unfortunately. I have a licenses.conf with only free licenses if you want to take a look.
On the note of compiling from source, most big packages (GHC, Open Office, Firefox. Not GCC) have binary packages you can install. Most of them you need to compile from source.
Although, wouldn’t it be possible just to use the gNewSense repositories?
May 9, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Ben Webb
No, my whole point is that gNewSense only contains packages from main and universe. Hence, a fully free version of multiverse would be useful for gNewSense users also.
PS. Grrr, forgot to log in.
May 10, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Tim Dobson
oh god, only touch gentoo if you have a few days to lose
does sound a neat feature though.
/me puts on his teflon suit.
I was on debian etch for ages, which was fine, though i find that i really need more exciting things because etch is stable but essentially boring.
I’m seriously thinking of moving to gnewsense 2.0.
oen thing to bear in mind is that you caan always add extra repositories and packages while still keeping the core gnewsense – sure you’ll have problems but it will mostly work
on another note, ditch 3d FX they are fucking annoying, get yourself a standard network card (freecycle.org/your local cuncil tip/recycling point etc are good places to pick up one on the cheap) – the gnewsense live cd i have works in at least two of my machines.
on the other note, free software is incredibly important on firmware bits and bobs – and considering that the hardware amnufacturers are selling you a physical product, they lose nothing from making their horrible firmware free software.
May 10, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Ben Webb
Awwww, I like the 3D effects :S. But, I do hope to get a standard network card. Thing is, I don’t know how I’d tell what cards will and won’t require non-free firmware. Also, one of my pcs uses wireless, and I should imagine that gnewsense support wireless cards are rather hard to come by.
Why is software incredibly important for fimrware? I will agree it is of some importance, but surely its not as important as having a free software OS. In fact, I would place its importance on a similar level to that of having a free software bios. Although, you have a point about hardware manufacturers loosing nothing. However, the same applies to drivers, and look at how incredibly reluctant most companies are to release them as free software!
May 14, 2008 at 7:30 am
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