It is the FSF's right to believe what they do and to promote what they please. As it is everyone in this threads right to agree or disagree, as in most things in life there isn't anything black or white about this issue, just 50 shades of grey...
One thing to keep in mind, the Free Software Foundation only cares about promoting GNU. They don't care about promoting Linux. The only reason they're using Linux as a vehicle is because that's the best choice. If what they saw as a better opportunity came along, I guarantee they'd jump ship in an instant.
Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. - Dr. Seuss
Proprietary software by its nature of being proprietary does not necessarily present a security risk. Likewise, open source code by its nature of being open source does not necessarily make it more secure. Consider, openssl as an example.
The potential for risk comes from the fact that other developers cannot legally audit the code for security holes/flaws. Or patch the code if flaws are found. Again, openssl comes to mind.
Here is an area of insecurity that I never, ever thought of before I read this blog.
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1332
Regards.
Last edited by grahammechanical; April 15th, 2014 at 03:27 PM.
It is a machine. It is more stupid than we are. It will not stop us from doing stupid things.
Ubuntu user #33,200. Linux user #530,530
That Hurd kernel of their's (or the March others are working on) is taking ages to materialise into a worthwhile substitute for Linux
But yes I agree with your statement. I just don't ever see them gaining any traction, it's been 31 years already (not much younger than I am)...
I seriously doubt if there will ever be a better base for GNU than Linux. But I do think they're using it grudgingly. They definitely don't care to promote Linux, just GNU. And there's no way they're going to promote a distro that even has one line of proprietary code in it.
Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. - Dr. Seuss
Not trying to be snarky, but what, exactly, is the GNU base other than the collection of command line tools ported/created years ago? Those are also available in their BSD guise.
Perhaps I'm forgetting something, but it seems GNU needs Linux to substantiate their notion of "GNU/Linux" much more than Linux needs GNU to have a funtioning OS.
[Delberate snark] Isn't 25-or-so years long enough to wait for GNU to produce its own OS?[/Deliberate snark]
The FSF have never had anything against linux, they do however try and promote only free software and not proprietary. If it wasn't for the merger of GNU and Linux there would be no distro's.
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