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翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Friday, 09-May-2025 18:03:33 JST 翠星石
@LucKeyProductions >The problem is that it is vague,
The 4 freedoms are very specific and are in no way vague - it is quite simple to determine if the software is free or not.
>to the point of calling things (for instance) libre games while all the media is nonfree, or all of a program's icons
Yes, the software component of such games are free, but the media is not.
That doesn't stop people from enjoying freedom with the software, as the software will still run if you go swap out the media with blank images and audio files etc (i.e. with a script) and people are also free to import or draw or compose free replacements for the media.
>It is the FSF definition - not the DSFG - that explicitly allows for some leniency here.
That doesn't make any sense, considering that the DSFG is a rewriting of the free software definition, except looser.
Debian is a bad example, as they have never in fact disallowed proprietary software or proprietary media - all they have ever required is that it be put in a separate repo (on the same servers and documented in the same wiki even) and Debian is even proprietary software by default now.
For example, Debian puts free game software in these packages in the free repo;
https://packages.debian.org/sid/games/angband
https://packages.debian.org/sid/games/angband-data
They also distribute nonfree audio files, except they happen to be in the nonfree repo;
https://packages.debian.org/sid/games/angband-audio
The game appears to play fine without the proprietary audio files, so Debian certainly could have chosen to not distribute them, but they are.
>This is another implication that "free software" focuses mainly on free source code, instead of programs as a whole. In part because that makes monetization easier.
Free software focuses on all of the executable component of the software - both the source code and the binaries equally.
For practical reasons, the FSF does compromise on many things that don't impact the users freedom in the end and one of those compromises is to permit business activities that are not harmful for software freedom; https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html
It is in fact "open source" that mainly focuses on publicly available and source code that can work with a public development model, but is not too concerned if the binaries and even those sources are in fact nonfree.