[Fwd: GNU biz]

[Bernhard Reiter]

Hi everybody,

On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 05:13:09PM +0100, Mark Taylor wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
^^^ btw: this is deprecated non-mime OpenPGP

> On Thursday 31 March 2005 14:33, Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> > from -
> > http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/gnubiz-disc/2000-December/000014.html

The link above goes to the latest draft  (0.9.10)
of the GNU Business network criteria.
It is important to keep the draft state in mind,
though this criteria have been helpful already many times.
(E.g. we use them at www.freegis.org to filter companies that we 
included in the company listing on the FreeGIS-CDs.)

> >          Area "Service, Installation & Support"
> >
> > Service, installation and support exclusively for Free Software.
> >
> > (-) Occasionally provides services for specific proprietary programs
> > that do obscure jobs, in conjunction with Free Software.
> >
> > (--) Normally provides services for specific proprietary programs that
> > do obscure jobs, in conjunction with Free Software.
> >
> > Exclusion: Any other support for proprietary programs.
> >
> > Ouch! Does this mean you cannot install SAMBA because it can be
> > considered support for Server Message Block from MS? 

You can ask a different question that will be most important:
Is the SMB support that SAMBA implements an open standard?
My criteria for open standards are: 
(a) There are at least two interoperable implementations 
and (b) one of those is Free Software.
(c) In practice you are allowed to use the standard implemented 
with Free Software.

All of this seems to be given with Samba, though c) might be in legal danger 
because of software patents and digital restriction management laws.

Note: Installing Samba does not mean that you install 
windows clients accessing it.

> > Or does this mean
> > that you can support Evolution because it runs on Windows? 

For a long time Free Software running on proprietary operating
systems is considered Free Software. 
If it is ethcial to support depends on the circumstances.
We might want to add a rule for this in the criteria.

I would say that you can support Free Software depending 
on non-free system, but not support the non-free components like windows.
When you bring your customer evolution to windows machines that did
run outlook before, you are clearly doing a step towards freedom.
If you exchange your gtk application with a Java application that 
need a proprietary tool chain, then you act unethical.

> > Or does this
> > mean that you cannot support Outlook?

Yes, it means that you fail the criteria if your company 
does service, installation and support for Outlook for other people.

> Good question. I suspect not, or I'd like to think not.
> Sadly we live and work in a world running largely on non-Free Software. 
> We need to interact in order to bring them into our world.

True, as being one of the contributors of the draft, 
I think that the step in the right direction to be taken into account more.

Best,
	Bernhard
-- 
FSFE -- Chancellor Germany                                    (fsfeurope.org)

Your donation makes our work possible:  www.fsfeurope.org/help/donate.en.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/gnubiz-disc/attachments/20050402/49a58465/attachment.pgp