Re: Linking to non-free websites from gnome.org

[Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com>]

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 4:26 AM, Richard Stallman <rms gnu org> wrote:

  > Now, to the subject of whether GNOME should or should not link to non-free
  > websites

The _expression_ "nonfree website" is one we do not use, because it is
not clear what that would mean.  Web sites raise various kinds of
ethical issues.

The issue here is very specific: a web site requires visitors to run
nonfree software in order to use the site to do the job in question
(in this case, to donate).

If a web site runs nonfree software internally, that doesn't affect
the site's visitors, so we have no reason to concern ourselves with that.

Whist I don't disagree with what you are saying. There are only so many hours in the day. I can't reasonably drop in replace "non-free websites" with all that text or I would never get to the points I am trying to make about it.

As I suggested earlier on this point, unless someone contradicts your definition (which I don't believe anyone has done, yet), I am acting on the assumption that people reading this thread have already seen what we are talking about and that we have defined what we mean already:

For us to collectively be able to answer the question of whether GNOME should be endorsing links to non-free sites, we first need to be able to answer a couple of relevant questions.

 

1. In what situations can any published link on GNOME's servers be representative of the GNOME Foundation (i.e. how are we defining GNOME as a trademark/brand) such that that link could be perceived as being an endorsement/advertisement.
2. What is a link to a non-free site (I believe Richard might have gone some way to covering that already, though there might yet be some debate to be had, yet)  

Magdalen