multimedia licensing

[Craig White]

On Mon, 2005-04-18 at 09:44 -0600, kwhiskers wrote:
> If this is the case, then this development seems dangerous for Linux'
> long-term existence. Eventually, all countries will pass similar
> legislation: Russia might join the EU; China is already becoming the
> world's largest and most powerful industrial producer of consumer
> goods (albeit likely also the world's largest bootlegger). What then?
> 
> It seems to me, the sensible thing is to legeslate open standards and
> open file formats, to allow user portability, transparency, etc. But
> how to convince companies that their software should store data in a
> format that is 100% readable by a competitor's program? Or worse, an
> OS that is vastly superior to anything one can buy... and FREE?
> 
> And that brings up another thought: will Linux remain free for the
> future? Already, there are vultures hawking isos burnt to CD and some
> distros that offer 'premium' versions for pay. Is it only a matter of
> time before Linux becomes the next Windows, where the consumer must
> pay an annual update fee in order to stay on top of the innovations?
----
I am gathering that you are quite new to the Linux dance since things
have been this way for a long time.

Fedora chooses to integrate only the open source packages which in their
estimation, contain licenses that are compatible with GPL.

Packages such as Acrobat Reader and Flash Player, though free are not
open source and hence not included.

Code source such as mp3 codecs are restricted license, hence, not
included.

What other projects include isn't entirely material.

Since the software is essentially free - the distributions that are
charging are charging for things other than the software itself and you
would have to refer to the vendor's information to find out what you are
actually paying for and decide for yourself whether it is worth
purchasing. In some cases, it may very well include a disc of
proprietary software with restrictive licensing which may need to be
installed separately.

Craig