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Ubuntu, or rather Canonical receive a lot of flack from various communities. I know one thing just recently came up about the inclusion of ZFS because of simple licensing reasons. I was curious if some one could possibly give a few commands and possibly an explanation on just how GNU Ubuntu actually is and if it can be GNU what is stopping it from that? Also maybe list the ways you can list all blobs on the system to better highlight what is limiting its GNU stamp of approval.

Thanks

muru
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Goddard
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  • Can you clarify what exactly you are asking because it sort of doesn't make senses – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Mar 20 '16 at 02:45
  • This is incredibly broad. The FSF list of what they term to be free distributions can be seen here: http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html Trisquel, which is based upon Ubuntu, meets the standards of the FSF but is out of scope here at AskUbuntu as it is a derivative that doesn't totally track with Ubuntu. – Stephen Michael Kellat Mar 20 '16 at 02:58
  • Seems pretty specific to me as the guidelines of the FSF are specific...right? It might be nice to have this question answered as I am honestly curious what the exact differences are currently. You get a lot of random people saying things kind of out of the side of their mouth, but no honest answers that pin point the exact things that fall outside the FSF scope. – Goddard Mar 20 '16 at 05:03
  • It is kind of strange that this was put on hold as being unclear and yet two people managed to answer the question perfectly. – Goddard Mar 21 '16 at 19:30
  • I find this question unclear/nonsensical because "GNU" is a collection of software projects (Ubuntu not being one of them). "GNU" is not a copyright license or an organization that advocates or evaluates copyright licenses. Hence Ubuntu cannot be GNU to any degree because there is just no canonical (no pun intended) metric for such an evaluation. – David Foerster Mar 22 '16 at 08:40
  • You still didn't explain how two people answered the question very clearly and correctly when it is so "unclear".. if some one like yourself wanted to be very specific as to which GNU License or GPL rather then that is your choice when answering the question to better explain and teach things to the person asking. – Goddard Mar 22 '16 at 16:35

2 Answers2

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To me the stance the FSF takes is to rigid. I also can understand why; if they do not they tarnish their principle: software needs to be free.

Problem though: that would not allow us to play MP3 and MP4 where we need to stick to OGG. Even using a tool to convert it to OGG would violate the FSF stance.

So from a users point of view not really user friendly.

The FSF has the following complaints about Ubuntu:

Ubuntu GNU/Linux

Ubuntu provides specific repositories of nonfree software, and Canonical expressly promotes and recommends nonfree software under the Ubuntu name in some of their distribution channels. Ubuntu offers the option to install only free packages, which means it also offers the option to install nonfree packages too. In addition, the version of Linux, the kernel, included in Ubuntu contains firmware blobs.

The “Ubuntu Software Center” lists proprietary programs and free programs jumbled together. It is hard to tell which ones are free since proprietary programs for download at no charge are labelled “free”.

Since October 2012, Ubuntu sends personal data about users' searches to a server belonging to Canonical, which sends back ads to buy things from Amazon. This does not, strictly speaking, affect whether Ubuntu is free software, but it is a violation of users' privacy. It also encourages buying from Amazon, a company associated with DRM as well as mistreatment of workers, authors and publishers.

This adware is one of the rare occasions in which a free software developer persists in keeping a malicious feature in its version of a free program.

Ubuntu appears to permit commercial redistribution of exact copies with the trademarks; removal of the trademarks is required only for modified versions. That is an acceptable policy for trademarks. The same page, further down, makes a vague and ominous statement about “Ubuntu patents,” without giving enough details to show whether that constitutes aggression or not.

That page spreads confusion by using the misleading term “intellectual property rights”, which falsely presumes that trademark law and patent law and several other laws belong in one single conceptual framework. Use of that term is harmful, without exception, so after making a reference to someone else's use of the term, we should always reject it. However, that is not a substantive issue about Ubuntu as a GNU/Linux distribution.

So ...

  • repositories show non-free and free applications. I am afraid in 16.04 this is still the case and I doubt Canonical is ever going to give in on this. Commercial applications have a place in Ubuntu. The 1st page that shows does not even tell you that there is software we need to pay for when we want to use it.

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  • Regarding personal data: Canonical still does this though it is now an opt-in instead of opt-out. It still will not make the FSF happy: they consider Amazon to be evil (they support DRM and claim it abuses its employees). Does the deal with Amazon make most of us unhappy? Maybe. Some users did make a switch to another operating system. Will this stay in Ubuntu? Probably. Ubuntu is not making a profit and this will generate a little bit of revenue. Do I personally like the Amazon link? Well no. It is the 1st to disappear from my launcher and all the "send data to" options are turned off. Minor nuisance ... big deal for the FSF.

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  • Regarding "redistribution". No problems there it seems; the vague comment regarding patents has not stopped someone from creating Mint. Nor any of the other clones (I counted 45 on that wikipage). But have a look at this image: http://futurist.se/gldt/wp-content/uploads/12.10/gldt1210.png (not including it in the post itself). But the spin-offs from Ubuntu is astonishing.

  • The last one about copyright. There has been a change in that so the FSF is a bit more happy about it.

Conclusion: If Ubuntu ever will become 100% GNU it will not be in the near future. Plus there needs to change a lot in the way everyone looks at using operating systems. MP3/MP4 is not going to go away and if Microsoft keeps supporting those and not switch to OGG we (users) will need the codec to play it. The same goes for the video drivers. nVidia and AMD can support open source but they will also always provide binaries to protect their software.

Not going to happen. Proprietary blobs are not going away in the near future.

Also maybe list the ways you can list all blobs on the system to better highlight what is limiting its GNU stamp of approval.

Search for "restricted" in software center and you will get the codecs that are proprietary. Then there is the additional drivers in dash that will show proprietary drivers.

A kernel with proprietary modules is considered "tainted" (see What does the kernel taint value mean? or https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/118116/linux-what-is-a-tainted-kernel )

cat /proc/sys/kernel/tainted

will show a number on how tainted your kernel is. And What does the kernel taint value mean? has a list on what the number means (if it shows 75 it means 64, 8, 2 and 1).

Community
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Rinzwind
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GNU thinks that all software should be open source. They therefore object to things like the proprietary video drivers ( nuovo, and the just discontinued amd drivers ), as well as even the firmware that runs in most of the hardware in a modern PC, which is provided by manufacturers as binary blobs that the linux kernel community is willing to ship with the kernel to make the hardware work. They acknowledge however, that while morally objectionable to them, they have no right to prevent you from using such closed source software in conjunction with their open source software, at least under the GPLv2 ( GPLv3 was created in an attempt to clamp down on this, though as far as I can see they have no legal leg to stand on for this ).

This is not really related to the recent controversy surrounding ZFS, which centers around the somewhat hypocritical belief held by some in the linux kernel community ( which is GPLv2 ) that while they do not mind shipping binary blobs that get loaded into other processors on your system, nor you running closed source applications on your system, they think they have the right to prevent you from loading non GPL'd drivers on your system when it suits them.

Most modern hardware at least requires proprietary firmware blobs to function. For a complete list, see the linux-libre project, which has removed them all to adhere to the GNU beliefs. As a result, it doesn't function with a lot of hardware.

Outside of the kernel, Debian and Ubuntu have many software packages that do not meet GNU's definition of free software. In Debian, this software can be found in the nonfree repository, and typically contains the string "dfsg" in their version number, standing for debian free software guidelines, which the package in question violates.

psusi
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