Linux is not FREE!!??

As if my eyes popped outta my face when I read such thing!!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Linux as much as I love windows (if not more)…

Anyways, according to a post in ZDNET’s blog by “Joe Brockmeier” (Who’s btw the community manager of openSUSE), Linux is not %100 free…

He referred to Tom Callaway “Who’s the Fedora’s Engineering Manager” mentioned that you can’t call a “%100 Free GNU\Linux Distribution” totally free since it has some propriotary and closed packages and files thats added as if they’re free and open-source…

It’s not that they’re not working on managing things, but as Tom (Nicknamed as “Spot”) says that to be %100 free, every file in the whole system must be open-source and free… Or atleast supported but listen as propriotary… Or something like this…

I might lack methods an skills to deliver what they’re trying to say (Or what I’m trying to say), so I’ll just leave SPOT’s link to understand more…

So if I understood things the right way, this question goes to Linux users:
You still count the “Screw the propriotary!! VIVA LA SOURCE” as a reason to prefer Linux on Windows\MAC? 😛 (I’m sure SIGTERMer will go crazy since he’s paranoid when it gets to licenses)

Click here to read the “Spot”s post
Click here to read the ZDNET’s post

5 thoughts on “Linux is not FREE!!??

  1. Actually i dont mind that linux is not %100 free, as long as its >%70 free i am satisfied, I have nVidia proprietary driver, Realplayer, Many games on my linux laptop, all of these are not free [speech].
    I dont mind as long as i dont see windows price and stupidity! 😀

  2. In reality it is not The GNU/Linux fault.
    Linux distros do provide open source technologies as an alternative to proprietary ones. e.g.
    mkv vs avi
    ogg vs mp3
    odf vs doc and docx
    theora vs mp4 and wmv…
    and many many others.
    but users keep asking to support the proprietary
    stuff too.
    This is why it is hard to have 100% GNU/Linux.
    Also many hardware vendors refuse to open-source their drivers.

  3. Frankom:
    The cost isn’t the reason I’m posting this… it’s ofcourse distributed freely, but it doesn’t meet the “free” definition that those who made such OS meant

    Almwaysa:
    I don’t mind either… I’ve been using cracked softwares for a while after all… But I’m targeting those who uses Linux and keep annoying us with the “proprietary” excuse… Ofcourse, Linux is awesome… I use both linux and windows

    Baroni:
    I totally agree with you… They DO provide alternative open-source solutions for proprietary softwares, yet they still use non-free softwares and packages (And by non-free, I mean softwares that doesn’t meet the “Free” definition that GNU/Linux and similars)

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