In yet another round of my Ubuntu One posts, I've come up with an analogy, all thanks to bigbrovar. He wrote in the identi.ca Ubuntu group:
canonical can build their proprietary !ubuntu one all they want. me am making an open source sandwich for dinner. PM me if u need the source.
My response was quick and a logical extension to this analogy:
@bigbrovar that analogy would only work if you were the bakery! !ubuntu ;)
@bigbrovar the bakery is the place that provides the ingredients and any additional services !ubuntu
@bigbrovar the #sandwich is what you get to eat - the distro !ubuntu
Again, this harkens back to my interpretation of the Ubuntu philosophy. Some call it too strict an interpretation, and that the proprietary client-side "goes against the Ubuntu spirit". So it goes against the Spirit but not the philosophy? Here's how the Ubuntu Philosophy reads:
- Every computer user should have the freedom to download, run, copy,
distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for any
purpose, without paying licensing fees.Our philosophy is reflected in the software we produce and included in
our distribution. As a result, the licensing terms of the software we
distribute are measured against our philosophy, using the Ubuntu License Policy.
The bold in the above is my own emphasis.
Do you expect the bakery to tell you every aspect of their business? No, you go to the bakery for a sandwich. You can know the recipe for the sandwich; buns, tomato, lettuce, ham. But it's an entirely different matter when you ask for the fridge where they store the tomato for free. You have your sandwich, provided as a service by the bakery, and they even tell you the recipe. All they do is keep the ingredients in their proprietary fridge until you order.
Your sandwich, your distro, is still free. Free to download, run, share with others, study its inner workings, share, etc. If it weren't, we wouldn't see so many derivatives such as the now-popular CrunchBang Linux
One last comment on all this before I completely abandon the subject:
i'd say GNU is the crust. keeps everything from spilling out
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