to autodownload or not to autodownload

[Hans de Goede]

Christopher Aillon wrote:
> On 02/10/2008 02:52 PM, Hans de Goede wrote:
>>> If users want to get non-free items, I would MUCH rather usher them 
>>> to the legal way to do so versus the illegal way.  Fluendo is 
>>> currently the only legal way we can offer for the US and some other 
>>> countries.
>>>
>>
>> The same argument could be used for autodownloader, if someone wants 
>> to play quake, I much rather have they use autodl to download a legal 
>> version then use some pirated full version.
>>
>> I really must say I don't understand how people can have an issue with 
>> autodownloader and at the same time defend codina. To me that is 
>> nothing shirt of hypocritical.
> 
> Here's the bottom line:
> 
> Is $MEDIAPLAYER usable if the user decides they don't want to download 
> any codecs with codeina?  Yes, because we ship and support vorbis, 
> theora, flac, wav, etc.
> 
> Is $GAME playable if the user decides they don't want to download the 
> non-free items?  If yes, I'm totally fine with the game using 
> autodownloader.  If no, I have a major problem with the game being in 
> Fedora.  In neither case do I have a problem with autodownloader existing.
> 

This is turning into a word game, the real questions are:
1) Is offering the user to download non freely redistributable, but freely
    downloadable content to enhance the users experience acceptable?

2) Is offering the user to download non free, but freely downloadable code to
    enhance the users experience acceptable?

3) Is pointing the user to a website where it can buy proprietary code (aka
    advertising of proprietary code) to enhance the users experience acceptable?


If you don't believe me this are the true questions, lets take vavoom for 
example currently installing the vavoom package does not result in getting a 
playable game, because the current free dataset we have (freedoom) was designed 
for another doom engine derative: prboom. So I could spend some time fixing 
freedoom and / or vavoom to work together and the vavoom and all the included 
.desktop files launching autodownloader to install doom / heretic / hexen 
shareware would all of a sudden be ok?

Likewise, currently the .desktop files (and shell scripts and autodlrc files) 
included with vavoom for doom-shareware are not ok, but if I add them to 
prboom, which can play the doom shareware datafiles too, they are?

This all sounds rather strange, either such a convient way for end users to 
easily install and get a well integrated version of these non freely 
redistributable datasets is ok or it isn't.

Regards,

Hans