An Unfortunate Style of Communication.

Debian has just as much cause to call the Emacs manual Free Bait as the FSFLA (or FSF) has to call Linux Free Bait. I understand that the Emacs manual claims to be Free but has invariant sections denying the user the freedom to modify the document as they wish, thus failing to meet the DFSG.

However none of the FSFLA, FSF, Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds think that tricking users into using non-free software is good. The particular point of disagreement that led to this press release is whether moving non-free firmware from ROM to RAM is bad; One point of view is that it makes very little difference; Another point-of-view is roughly that it is bad because now we have an artificial barrier rather than a physical barrier to modifying the firmware.

This announcement does not make an argument as to why their point-of-view is correct. It does even make it clear what the opposing view-points are. Accusations of being "Free Bait" also do not assist in understanding the view points, as this accusation could be made against any project that happens to have even the most minute disagreement as to the dividing line between free and non-free. My experience has been that this style of communication actually impedes understanding, and can be quite destructive to a community.