Re: Non-free software and GNOME (The conclusion)

[Andy Tai <lichengtai yahoo com>]

This is a matter of degree, so it is hard to determine
what is mentioning and what is advertisting.  But
GNOME has made this far without help from proprietary
software, but GNOME has made this far from the direct
association with the GNU Project (considering the
early days when GNOME has to fight the uphill battle
with KDE for community support, which started earlier,
and RMS's strong endorsement of GNOME which bought
many people into the GNOME camp) and support from
companies like Red Hat, Eazel and Ximian, and also
Sun, HP, IBM, etc.  So mentioning proprietary software
is ok, but actively advertising it is unnecessary.

One thing good about Red Hat is its strong support for
the GNU Project.  As a company gets larger, generally
it wants to use its name for everything.  But you
don't see this with Red Hat.  Projects like gcc, gdb,
auto tools, GNOME, etc continue to be GNU Projects
with large Red Hat involvement.  That says a lot about
the strong ethics of the company.

--- Linas Vepstas <linas linas org> wrote:

> My goal is to expand the number of GPL developers,
> by allowing and
> encouraging 'infidels' to write GPL'ed code. 
> Advertising proprietary
> software is a small price to pay if these same
> people will also develop
> new GPL'ed code.
> 
> --linas

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