[Mageia-dev] Remove upgrade functionnality in installer

[Johnny A. Solbu]

On Sunday 24 June 2012 05:57, andre999 wrote:
> It would be a considerable advantage 
> for users in my circumstances, particularly those with fewer computer 
> skills, to have a DVD with non-free firmware where no reliable free 
> equivalent exists. 

Even thou I'm not going to use the non-free iso-s myself, I see the benefit for those that doesn't care about their freedom, and just want something that works.
(Yes, I am a Free Software activist. :-)= )

During installation from CD/DVD, one of the quiestions is if one have additional installation medias (cd, dvd, internett mirror) available. We could have an ISO with only the non-free drivers as an additional media one could (download and) select in the installer. This could be a dual arch iso, and it would use less space on the mirrors.

> We could call it "Essentially free". 

No. That would really Not make things better for the average user. It would just confuse things to have both the non-free AND the Free version labeled "free", as "free" in FOSS projects are often the equivalent of saying it doesn't contain non-free software.

Besides, many users never use the download pages on the distro's homepages to download the latest ISO, they go directly to their favourite mirror and get it from there. And if the free and non-free version are both labeled free, it is no longer obvious which iso he should get when he wan't the Free version. And it would make some users think that none of them have non-free drivers.

> And if we want to continue to produce the handicapped version without 
> any nonfree firmware, call it "totally free".

Some of us think it's the other way around: the non-free version is the one which is handicaped. ;-)=

Also, if we stop shipping the Free version and only make a non-free version available, some users would no longer install Mageia. I am one of them. I would also no longer recommend it to my friends, because no longer have a Free version available.

This is exactly the kind of thing that made me switch from Mandriva to Mageia in the first place. In MDV 2011 one could no longer chose to install only free software. I was even told on the cooker list that if I wanted only free software, I had to manually uninstall the non-free packages after installation. How is the average user supposed to figuer out which of the installed packages are non-free packages... This is not easy even for the advanced users.

There's a difference in giving us another option, and replacing the existing option.
Some of us really do care about our Freedom. Please don't take it away.

-- 
Johnny A. Solbu
PGP key ID: 0xFA687324
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: </pipermail/mageia-dev/attachments/20120624/9ba5d30e/attachment.asc>