Am Thursday, dem 30. Oct 2008 schrieb sam.liddicott:
Wed Oct 29 2008 7:38:33 pm GMT from Bjoern Schiessle to "P.B." Subject: Re: firefox, iceweasel, burningdog, icecat, ...
... People who have no problem adding non-Free Software to their browser probably don't care that much about having a complete free operating system and/or browser. So they are probably not the main target group of IceCat.
I enjoy the irony of the idea that free software should not allow people to be non-free; reminding me of the US burn-the-flag debate on whether or not flag burning should be a constitutionally supported expression of free speech given that burning a flag sort of opposed the principles of the country and constitution.
I don't know how this is related to this discussion. Nobody here wants to forbid non-free software. And I do not know anybody who says so. We just encourage to use Free Software, but we don't force it on anybody.
But I agree with most posters that free software needs to become relevant to people to whom software freedom is not yet relevant and Ithink that this will be done by being relevant in other ways which first means solving-the-problem at hand.
Who are these "most posters" who you refer to? I must have missed these postings, for I cannot find them. -- maybe P.B., but P.B. is not "most posters".
To me whether or not iceweasel should support non-free flash is another incarnation of the older question: Should Stallman have used a non-free compiler to develop gcc? The answer NOW is "yes" because it clearly DID lead to more freedom, so there is no debate;
He was working to write a freedom respecting replacement. That is good. The answer would have been the same, if he failed. It was worth trying anyway.
but the debate is still on about whether or not non-free flash is important.
Most people, who ask for non-free flash are not involved in the process of making it free.
And by the way: there is a free replacement now: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ So thanks to the strong efforts of the GNU project we have the "freedom of choice" now.
For certain: those who say it should not be supported are those who value a C compiler more than a flash player, but the same is not true for many of those who are yet to embrace free software and whose entry will be delayed until it meets ALL their needs but only if WE insist on it.
Again: I don't know whom you are referring to. AFAIK IceCat does work with the non-free flash plugin. The difference is only, that the default is a different plugin, ie. gnash, which is Free Software.