Corporate pressure

[david paeme]

wouldn't it be a good idea to include some kind of license acceptance
mechanism into apt/yum/rpm? 

for example, to get adobe acrobat to install, the user would get a
prompt to accept the adobe license, which he can (and the software
installs), or not (so, it doesn't install...).

software vendors will probably like this, because they can the user to
accept their license, and not having people install the software without
doing that. 

and this could work for just about anything (java, flash, binary drivers
like those from nvidia, etc...)

also,the corporate weight of redhat -- or even some high-profile people
like ESR or AC -- could help persuade the companies.


bye,

d.

**by the way, doesn rpm contain a mechanism like this? maybe something
in the specfile?


On Mon, 2004-02-02 at 13:52, Peter Backlund wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> On the subject of distributing free-as-in-beer proprietary software, I 
> think that the approach Warren has taken towards Macromedia (and that I 
> tried on Real and Adobe) could be successful. However, if the project 
> were to be represented by someone more knowledgeable and more 
> experienced in PR relations etc, we might get a few more (positive) 
> answers. Two names come immediately into mind: ESR and Alan Cox.
> 
> What we want, is of course to have certain pieces of software such as 
> RealPlayer/HelixPlayer and Acrobat Reader are made available in a 
> sensibly packaged way, accesible via the standard software management 
> tools. The community could handle this through the usual 
> fedora.us/livna.org QA process, and come up with packages that fit into 
> FC the way they should (menu entries, mime types, stripped bloat, 
> plugins that work, etc etc). This will increase the number of satisfied 
> users of both FC and the Real/Adobe products, to _zero cost_ for the 
> companies in question. So, a few possible scenarios would be:
> 
> 1. Company X allows free redistribution, similar to the Nvidia driver.
> 2. X allows limited redistribution, but through yum/apt/up2date,  like 
> Macromedia does.
> 3. X does not allow redistribution, but can host the community developed 
> package on their own site.
> 
> I think it's worth a shot at least. So, any big name takers? ESR? Alan? 
> someone at redhat.com?
> 
> /Peter
> 
>