codec buddy pain

[Luis Villa]

On 11/5/07, seth vidal <skvidal at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2007-11-05 at 07:20 -0800, Karsten Wade wrote:
> > On Sun, 2007-11-04 at 15:14 -0500, seth vidal wrote:
> > > http://lwn.net/Articles/256974/
> > >
> > > Btw - in the interview they mention further integration of the webstore
> > > into codeina/codecbuddy. If it starts looking like we're pushing closed
> > > source software then that, imo, is when codeina gets dumped out of the
> > > distribution.
> >
> > Agreed; we should not be shipping a shill.
> >
> > > I don't care about needles and I don't want to ween the addicts off.
> >
> > People who build their houses on the top of the hill so the addicts in
> > the valley don't steal from them are just delaying the inevitable.
> >
> > We can remove ourselves from the problem entirely, but it doesn't make
> > the problem go away, and it doesn't stop it from growing larger (again)
> > to engulf us.
>
> If that's the case then we should just give up on this quixotic goal of
> having a pure-free-software distro and start talking to companies for
> how they'd like us to provide their closed-source packages and how to
> tie a webstore frontend into yum.

I'm not sure if these lines are useful to you, Seth, but there are two
tests for me that make me slightly less uncomfortable with these
plugins than with other things:

(1) is it low in the stack? if the non-free bit is low in the stack
(e.g., X drivers) you're at the mercy of the vendor- all of your
freedom is at risk if they go away. If the non-free bit is high in the
stack, you still have the majority of your freedom intact if the
non-freedom gets screwed up somehow, and you can more easilly work to
replace it. (Here, the bits are very high in the stack, and very easy
to replace- we'll have free implementations the very day the patents
expire. But of course we should resist moving the dep deeper into the
stack- no system sounds shipped as mp3, for example.)

(2) does it create non-free data, or merely allow consumption of
external non-free data? If we allow people to bring their stuff with
them (or import it from the non-free world) we're clearly helping them
move towards freedom. If we're helping them create non-free data,
we're in a different boat- that is a step back. (You might argue that
it is two steps forward one step back, but it is still different than
merely helping consume legacy media.)

[Tangentially, I feel comfortable saying that mp3 is not
system-critical, but exactly where in the stack flash is is a very
interesting question at this point, given how much of the web depends
on it. And the firefox Fedora ships *tries* to download flash, even if
it fails.]

[Also, tangent: Fedora should definitely use 'legacy media' where ever
possible to describe mp3s and other proprietary formats.]

Luis