@rozenglass @SuperSnekFriend >proprietary software in some core parts of the operating system, to improve the user-experience.
Adding proprietary malware without even asking to what should and must be a free system rather *degenerates* the user-experience.

>Includes proprietary software in the default install is a clear and unambiguous cut, but goes against the hivemind PR of the "Linux development community"
The kernel, Linux includes proprietary software in the tree, disguised as arrays of numbers.

"linux-firmware.git" is part of the default "install", as many drivers in Linux are written to not work without it (even if the driver works fine without it).

>Breakout the reverse engineering toolkit, and all software is free software >:3 Patched Final Fantasy VI ROMs, nom >.<
No, half of freedom 1 does not give you free software; https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms

Although trivial patches to proprietary software and patches to bypass some digital handcuffed may be trivial to achieve, that is not freedom, as such modifications are illegal and also cannot legally be distributed.

Anything more advanced starts taking hundreds of hours, which is not freedom.

To have the freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (for example, to make complicated changes, rather than trivial ones in your limited lifespan), you need the source code.

@wowaname >i flat-out disagree with you that free software includes the freedom to use proprietary software
Although running proprietary software is the antithesis of free software, the only thing that lets you run proprietary software no matter what is free software (proprietary software often refuses to run, or refuses to run other software).

>that complex codebases are akin to propietary software in spirit even if they are free from a licensing standpoint
Provided that the whole codebase is in the preferred form of modification, that is free software no matter how complicated it is - even if it's so complicated to takes 4 people to understand it, that's fine, as those 4 people aren't been prevented from working together.