Arguing with a user on a public Telegram group, he claims that Ubuntu is non-free because it contains non-free software.
Ubuntu is released under what license? can you say that Ubuntu is a non-free OS because it might contain proprietary drivers, such as nvidia ones?
My answer was that Ubuntu is a free OS, under the GPL, is that right?
Thanks for any clarification.
āIt depends on who you askā.
The vast majority of the software on the ISO is free software, under many different licenses. However thereās some software to enable hardware such as the nvidia binary GPU driver, and firmware blobs to make wireless network cards work. Thereās an option to install Ubuntu without any of those, so you can have a fully free environment.
However, if you ask someone who (for example) runs Trisquel or Gnewsense, they would say even with those proprietary things removed, there are other things which infringe. It depends where you are along the line from Stallmanite at one and to pragmatist at the other.
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Does Ubuntu desktop, as an operating system, have a license? Isnāt it a free OS?
The ease with which I can install restricted or closed drivers is also a userās choice, so I think Ubuntu is a free OS.
From live, if I have not misunderstood, you only have free software, I only see the repositories: main and restricted enabled.
Ubuntu āmainā component licence policy
All application software included in the Ubuntu main component:
- Must include source code. The main component has a strict and non-negotiable requirement that application software included in it must come with full source code.
- Must allow modification and distribution of modified copies under the same licence. Just having the source code does not convey the same freedom as having the right to change it. Without the ability to modify software, the Ubuntu community cannot support software, fix bugs, translate it, or improve it.
Unfortunately youāre wrong here. The live iso contains things like Alan said, including the nVidia driver and firmware for WiFi adapters.
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From live I donāt see any NVIDIA drivers installed (I have nvidia GPU):
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti]
The list of APPs installed on the LIVE: Ubuntu Pastebin
From youāre paste youāll see amd64-microcode which will lead you to the copyright
Itās what debian call ānon-freeā
It was downloaded from http://www.amd64.org/support/microcode.html up to
version 20120910 (now: http://www.amd64.org/microcode.html). For version
20131007 onwards, it was built from the linux-firmware git repository at:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/Debian only distributes the AMD64 microcode file in its unaltered form.
Upstream Author:
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.Upstream Copyright:
Copyright (C) 2010-2018 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved.Upstream License:
Permission is hereby granted by Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. ("AMD"), free of any license fees, to any person obtaining a copy of this microcode in binary form (the "Software") ("You"), to install, reproduce, copy and distribute copies of the Software and to permit persons to whom the Software is provided to do the same, subject to the following terms and conditions. Your use of any portion of the Software shall constitute Your acceptance of the following terms and conditions. If You do not agree to the following terms and conditions, do not use, retain or redistribute any portion of the Software.
Note: I donāt know where you paste was from; Iād have expected a link to a manifest for an ISO, but Iāve just provided an example that I hope will clarify from your list. Next Iād pick the linux-firmware probably (copyrights & rules from intel, adaptecā¦) as licenses tend to vary on packageā¦
To be totally āfreeā youād have to not include those packages; Ubuntu instead offers/offered? the āfreeā install option as per what @popey has already said (note: itās rather difficult to use on recent releases if I recall correctly) and few people use it.
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while they might not be running by default there is a deb package on the iso to be able to install them on offline systems ā¦ along with that your listing shows the linux-firmware package installed which is full of binary blobs that have no source at all (despite being freely distributable and necessary to drive a lot of the hardware on a linux system)
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My point wasnāt that you may or may not have the nVidia driver, but I very specifically said itās on the ISO.
Search this list for nvidia. http://releases.ubuntu.com/20.04/ubuntu-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.list
Not really, because itās an amalgamation of many software projects, licensed under different free and non-free licenses.
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The opinion I have and from what I understand from the documentation is that Ubuntu can work even without non-free software, so it doesnāt strictly depend on it.
I could also take out those non-free or restricted firmware packages and get Ubuntu working (hardware permitting).
I also have the freedom to fork Ubuntu.
So can I correct users when they write that āUbuntu is a non-free OSā? Ubuntu is a free OS.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
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I agree with your opinion.
I tend to like the Debian terminology, and think of Ubuntu as a non-free OS (but thatās not 100% true though). But I have no issues with the non-free definition (contains binary blobs)
With Debian you make the decision prior to download, you can grab a non-free, or standard Debian ISO. I know many boxes I have are fully usable using the free Debian system, but others are less fun as some devices just donāt fully work without non-free blobs; thus I usually install Debian using a non-free ISO too.
With Ubuntu there isnāt that choice before you install; the Ubuntu ISO has both and you decide at installation time. On older releases that was pretty easy so Ubuntu was available free or as I prefer to use non-free (default).
I tested Ubuntu with free software only a few times, it worked on the same hardware as Debian did, and had issues with the same hardware that Debian did - needing the non-free binary blobs.
Yes you can fork Ubuntu; there are many forks, including Trisquel
Itās not that difficult, after all the Ubuntu repositories make it pretty clear
- Main - Canonical-supported free and open-source software.
- Universe - Community-maintained free and open-source software.
- Restricted - Proprietary drivers for devices.
- Multiverse - Software restricted by copyright or legal issues.
That may depend on how you define free & non-free. Ubuntu defaults to including non-free so the non-free label does apply to me, but itās also very true that Ubuntu is free software, but itās not all thatās provided.
If you want a free OS, Ubuntu is that too in my opinion, but it makes it easy to install non-free software unless you tie it down, and itās this that possibly irks some. My 2c.
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