Ubuntu and its non-free secrets

Guest writes “I was wondering if Newsforge would cover the fact that Ubuntu’s translation tool called Rosetta is not FOSS software? Normally I guess I wouldn’t care but a distro that says the following on the front page:

* … We collaborate as widely as possible on bug fixing and code sharing.

* Ubuntu is entirely committed to the principles of free software development; we encourage people to use free and open source software, improve it and pass it on.

Needs to come up with some answers when this is clearly not the complete picture.

I’m not sure if most of the users of Ubuntu or Rosetta even know that this is the situation. And there are free alternatives out there. Pootle is one that comes to mind. Funily I see that they are happy to make use of Pootle related tools:
https://wiki.launchpad.canonical.com/RosettaOpenOf ficeSupport
without sharing their own.

But maybe this is that not so fine line between commercial and community distributions.”