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TechBytes Episode 85: Listeners'/Readers' Questions About FreedomBox, FSF Sponsorship, and Technical Decisions by Canonical and Red Hat

Richard leans to laptop
Direct download as Ogg (00:18:09, 10.5 MB)



Summary: Various questions from different people answered by Richard Stallman

Having solicited some questions for this interview with Richard Stallman, we start with a question about FreedomBox. One person asks: "How about freedombox? For the uneducated, the progress seems to be horribly slow. Here is the chance of a lifetime to show how with free software we could revolutionize the people communicate in the internet but the progress is too slow to take advantage of it."

To paraphrase what Alessandro asks, "what new project is the FSF going to or would want to sponsor in the near future? For example, as the FSF sponsored GNU Media Goblin to free us from YouTube, Flickr etc., will there be something to free us from other risks to our privacy, freedom, and control over data?"

Another reader asks: "What are your opinions about the companies that work with Free Software, notably Red Hat and Canonical, and are, every time, distancing themselves more and more from the ideals of Free Software and making small proprietary walled gardens in their so-called 'ecosystems' (which, of course, harm the whole GNU/Linux 'ecosystem' and community). Specifically, Canonical with its own graphical server, package format and init system and Red Hat with its own init system that's breaking the *nix paradigm of KISS and shoving down the throats of the entire community something that the community does not want (Gentoo and Slack are opposing it, Debian is sitting in the fence)."

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Keywords: gnu fsf richardstallman

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