Fedora's way forward

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 3/31/06, Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl> wrote:
> 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.

Why should media formts be singled out for this special treatment? Why
not build a table of potentially every conceivable piece of
functionality that someone might ever have a need to install a closed
source software solution for?

> 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?

Sure... go ahead and google for whatever proprietary software you want
and install what you find.  I really don't see why proprietary media
formasts should get special treatment of the vast space of proprietary
software you have the freedom to attempt to install and use. What's
next? You are going to be asking for fedora to provide as simplified
solution to find and install proprietary crap that runs under wine?
There's a hell of alot of freeware junk out there that probably runs
under wine. shall we make it as simple to find all that crap from
inside fedora like you want to do with media formats?  Hell.. maybe we
can contract with download.com and incude download.com's entire
searchable database of freeware/demoware inside fedora so people can
find stuff to run inside wine.

> 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!

Cut the hyperbole. There is a big difference between actively making
it harder and not spending time on it because there is other more
worthwhile things to do which actually feedback into open development.


-jef"fedora core 8: now with google!"spaleta