04.12.07
Ubuntu Gets Gutsy About Freedom
Mark Shuttleworth has heard the voices of the Ubuntu community and has announced that the next version of Ubuntu, codenamed "Gutsy Gibbon", will also have a Free version that will be developed in collaboration with gNewSense.
Aiming to be within the bounds of the strictest interpretation of “free” in free software, he announced a yet to be named Gutsy Gibbon version that will ship without any firmware, drivers, imagery, sounds, applications, or other content which does not include full source code (or other materials) and full rights of modification, remixing and redistribution.
In an e-mail to Ubuntu developers, Shuttleworth said: “work will be done in collaboration with the folks behind gNewsense”. gNewsense is a Linux distribution backed by the Free Software Foundation that removes all non-free material from Ubuntu.
Shuttleworth is hopeful that Gutsy will include the 3-D desktop that was originally aimed for inclusion with Feisty Fawn, but I still don’t see how the underlying issues have been resolved just yet.