I was reading about the distro "easypeasy," and learned that its philosophy is to freely use proprietary software if it works better than its free software equivalent. What do you think of this? I find it to be perfectly sensible, at least if not taken to an extreme. That could mean buying Microsoft Office and running it in a virtual machine, since I find OpenOffice Calc to be harder to use than Microsoft Excel. But used in moderation, it seems more sensible than the doctrinaire shunning of non-free software that I understand is practiced by Debian and Ubuntu.

(easypeasy has a stupid name, but who cares.)

I disagree with you
the Idea we are after is completely free distros with free software

i also really hate what ubuntu is doing
adding non-free software and they still call it open-source!

fedora is very strict
debian is also strict
but ubuntu isn't

Sounds like their philosophy is to use whatever works for the user. Not a bad idea and could enable the distro to act as a gateway to the rest.

And I disagree with you!!

The whole idea of computers is to somehow be useful to people. The typical end user could care less about proprietary vs. open source code, and they may also not trust "cost-free"---reasoning that, if they don't pay, they won't get any support. (e.g., being inherently lazy, I buy CrossOver rather than spend time configuring basic WINE.)

We now have too very different business models for operating systems, applications, and support. BOTH are valid, and both are going to be with us for the foreseable future. We can be proactive in promoting our view of how this should evolve, but the traditional model still has some advantages for many people, and most certainly has a right to exist.

One of the best current examples of peaceful co-existence is NVidia graphics drivers. With a few notable exceptions, you can get very good results with their (proprietary) drivers. While their installer is really slick, I also value the fact that I can get several versions from the Arch repos---including the one that works for my card under the latest version of X.

For Arch to offer the NVidia driver--and Flash--and the Intel wireless drivers---etc., etc.---in no way undermines or weakens the global cause that we all try to promote. Arch is simply providing value to the end-user, which is what any rational business model is supposed to do.

The "purist" distros (eg Debian) serve a useful purpose, and have every right to exist, but I find them annoying and don't use them......YMMV.

I believe this is incorrect. I have never seen or heard Ubuntu even hinting that a proprietary app, driver, etc. was open-source.

I find that unfortunate, because it means that can't easily be one of Linux's selling points to the typical end user.

lampamp
If you're really concerned about running a totally free distro, see this page:

http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

I did not say "typical Linux user". Linux users are a small minority, and portion of the computer users who even knows what is Linux and OpenSource is only slightly larger. I'll guess that over over 50% of all users don't even know what source code is.

Agreed. Since computers are tools, the software they run is entirely a practical issue, not a moral one, so why be so purist. I like the idea of free software mostly because it works, not because it's righteous.