Fedora's way forward

Hans de Goede j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl
Fri Mar 31 07:15:32 UTC 2006



Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Michael J Knox <michael at knox.net.nz>:
>> After looking at the link I gave closer, I noticed this:
>>
>> http://easylinux.info/wiki/Fedora_frog
>>
>> This is a script that installs and sets up a lot of the things people 
>> are looking for.
>>
>> How about we work on/from/with that? Its certainly a start.
> 
> Agreed.

No this is way wrong:
-it drags in mscorefont which is atleast a legal gray area
-it enables all repos under the sun causing repo conflict nightmare,
  I've had to help many new Linux users fix their systems after following
  great advise like this.
-and does all kind of other evil


Lets get back on track here, the problem ESR brought up was: Fedora 
lacks good multimedia playback. The reaction was a mix of:
-unfortunatly we can't provide that
-we can't provide that and we don't want to unless we can in a 100% open
  way
-we can provide that out of the box, and legally we can't ever provide
  it 100% open (livna is not legal in the states), but we could come some
  way using gratis propietary stuff which can be downloaded

My stance is:
-yes better multimedia support would be good
-yes Fedora must stay 100% opensource and redistributable etc
-Fedore should not encourage use of propietary formats but it shouldn't
  make it impossble either.


My Conclusion:

We should provide a mechanism where if a user tries to play an 
unsupported format, we look up the format in an ondisk (no phoning home 
please) tabel and see if there is a gratis and legal (even in the 
states!) downloadable codec in the tabel, if there is such a beast, then 
_help_ the user install it.

Notting more and notting less, so we wont be telling them to use mp3, 
nor will we be claiming support, but if a users tries it we help him, 
now how can helping a user accomplish what he is trying todo ever be bad?

Another take on this, I'm a big fan of free software because of the 
freedom it gives me, thats what this is all about isn't it, freedom!
Doesn't that include the freedom to use proprietary software when I want 
to? It seems that there are people here who would like to even forbid 
the use of proprietary software if they could and since then can't they 
atleast want to make it as hard to use as possible, this is BAD as it 
hurts other peoples freedom!

Regards,

Hans




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