So are you guys saying that this new/proposed (?) patent legislation in Europa will force other distros to remove vital components from the standard distibutions as well? <div>On 4/17/05, kwhiskers <<a href="mailto:kwhiskers@gmail.com">kwhiskers@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> I have a question: Many times I have heard that Fedora cannot be a fully functioning operating system because of licensing constraints. My question is: Why are other distributions not plagued by these same constraints? They're all Linux. I have tried SuSE, Mandrake (now Mandrivel - such an unfortunate christening), Knoppix, and some minor distros. </blockquote></div> Fully functional in every respect that GPL code supports. What exactly is missing that makes Fedora non-functional? Java, Flash, MP3, DVD support are not shipped due to license/legal concerns but all are *readily* available from a variety of easily accessable locations e.g. <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://livna.org/" target="_blank">livna.org</a>. > Why are other distributions not plagued by these same constraints? They're > all Linux. Fedora has chosen to only include GPL code- anything else is excluded. Some of the other distros are more cavalier in this respect. -- Bests, Jon Every Linux distribution that ships only open source software and is based on regions where software patents are enforced will be affected. regards Rahul