y.st./source/pages/en/weblog/2015/04-April/16.xhtml

<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'title' => 'A free Web comic found and a system freed',
	'body' => <<<END
<p>
	I found a Web comic today that is <a href="http://floraverse.com/about/">distributed under freedom-respecting terms</a>! Before this, the only Web comics I found that respect freedom are some of <a href="http://blog.ninapaley.com/">Nina Paley</a>&apos;s work, such as <a href="https://mimiandeunice.com/">Mimi and Eunice</a>.
	It&apos;s great to know that more than just one comic artist is not trying to keep a death grip on their work.
</p>
<p>
	I read the prologue, which was a very unnerving and sad story.
	A society gained global piece and, having no wars to get in the way, was able to also achieve vast scientific knowledge.
	At this point, they decided to attempt to find other intelligent life in the universe so they could share this knowledge.
	They find that they are alone in the universe though, unable to find even one sign of intelligence elsewhere.
	The people fell into despair and many ended their own lives or wandered space aimlessly.
	Some people instead decided to explore spirituality, and in doing so, they found that they might be able to reach other universes by altering their state of mind.
	They figured that there were other races like themselves, alone in their respective universes, and wanted to reach out.
	They make contact with a being of sorts, offering them the final piece of knowledge they are missing, but warning that the knowledge comes at too great a cost and that they should decline the offer.
	Only after accepting the offer are they told the price.
	The being says <a href="http://floraverse.com/comic/flora/page/9/"><q>Your price to pay for my knowledge is this: I shall eradicate every one of you.
	Out of kindness.
	And sadness.</q></a> Somehow, this entity believes that erasing them is a kindness.
	Whatever this knowledge is, I highly doubt it&apos;s bad enough for erasure to be a kindness.
	It also say it will erase them out of sadness, but it seems the main sadness is caused by the erasure itself.
	The entity says it will miss them, and seems to feel sorrow for the events leading up to this erasure.
	Why do this people need to be eradicated? I do not understand.
	I also don&apos;t understand how they are related to the actual story, as the story seems to take place in a different universe than the one these people were erased from.
</p>
<p>
	My brother&apos;s laptop seemed to have lost a part of the operating system and wouldn&apos;t boot any more.
	We installed Debian 8 on his system, but due to the hardware manufacturers being over-controlling, there was no way to make his wireless hardware work without nonfree firmware.
	Upon his request, I helped him install this firmware.
	It wasn&apos;t optimal, but it was probably better than wasting an otherwise-good laptop.
	It&apos;s not like fully-free laptops exist yet anyway.
	While I was doing this though, I made a startling discovery.
	Last time we did this, we had to enable the <code>contrib</code> repository, which we did so through the Synaptic interface.
	While the Debian team insists that the <code>contrib</code> and <code>non-free</code> repositories are not a part of Debian proper, Synaptic treats these repositories as special, offering simple check boxes to enable them.
	This special treatment means that they very much <strong>*are*</strong> a part of Debian.
	However, in Debian 8, these check boxes have been removed.
	These repositories are finally separate as far as the system is concerned, making Debian truly free (for the most part, there are still a couple of other minor issues such as the inclusion of $a[GFDL] works as long as they don&apos;t have invariant sections).
	The $a[FSF] would argue that because the Debian documentation still explains how to add these repositories to the system and these repositories are hosted on the same servers, that these repositories are still a part of Debian, but I disagree.
	Free and nonfree things can be hosted on the same server, and the documentation is not part of the system.
	Then again, the $a[FSF] has a lot of wacky ideas like that, such as that nonsoftware doesn&apos;t deserve the same freedoms as software.
	While the $a[FSF] has a lot of great ideas, they also have a lot of poor ones, and what they say should be treated as a tool to provoke your own thought processes and decisions, not treated as the absolute truth as if they are some sort of authority.
	Unlike the $a[FSF]-approved distributions, at least Debian recognizes the fact that nonsoftware needs to be under the same freedom-preserving scrutiny as software, and tries to keep nonfree nonsoftware out of its distribution as much as nonfree software.
</p>
<p>
	My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
</p>
END
);