[Assist] Fwd: Re: Telegram & Non-Free SaaSS

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > since our community doesn't see XMPP and IRC clients as problematic
  > additions to our repositories, we probably have no standing to take
  > away free clients that communicate with proprietary servers, like
  > telegram.

I basically agree with you, but this is a matter of what is right to
do, not a matter of "standing".  This is the FSF's directory, so the
FSF can adopt any criteria.

The directory's main purpose is to help people choose software that
respects their freedom, so that's the basis we use for choosing the
criteria.

It would be a mistake to choose the strictest criteria we could
imagine.  We should reject programs that have an important ethical
flaw, but rejecting all program for which some criticism could be
made is too strict.

For the reasons you've cited, we have no reason to treat XMPP and IRC
servers differently from the Telegram server.  We can list clients
for any of them.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)