Fedora Desktop future- RedHat moves

[Francis Earl]

Yes, I Ubuntu/Canonical are based in Isle of Man (that Island between
England and Ireland) on paper. I believe they are actually in London
England however, and in either case, the recent EU decisions related to
software patents apply. The EU and US patent systems related to software
are mostly equal today, and yet Canonical still distribute these things.

Difference is, Ubuntu/Canonical are funded by one man, and are not
profitable today. Red Hat is a public company, and must make money.
Risking legal ramifications is not something Red Hat is willing to do,
however it is something Mark is apparently comfortable with to appease
his users.

It is those things though that halt growth on consumer desktops, so
until such issues are resolved, Novell and Red Hat will never appeal
much to Joe User. Technically uninclined people do not care about such
issues, they just want to play their media library, use their webcams
and other similar things, and have their games work.

Until Red Hat and Novell can answer these questions in a way that allows
them to profit enough to appease shareholders, they will never have a
good consumer desktop product offering. I think Ubuntu is
counter-productive to that goal though, they are just ensuring consumers
continue to not care, rather than trying to really inform them in an
effective way. At least they are providing Linux with more mind-share
though, that can't be a bad thing.

On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 19:30 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 16:36 -0700, Francis Earl wrote:
> > It has everything to do with legalities, as the source code for the
> > encoders/decoders is available.
> 
> Fair point. However the precise nature of the difference between Fedora
> and Ubuntu in legal terms is not entirely clear to me. On both systems
> the user can install propietary codecs, and on both systems there are
> clear warnings that this is "at your own risk" and the proprietary stuff
> is not installed by default. The practical difference from the user's
> point of view is that Ubuntu tells you how to get it and Fedora doesn't
> (the fact that Ubuntu actually hosts some of it is to my mind a red
> herring; they could just as easily provide pointers to 3rd-party sites
> if they were worried about keeping legal distance, so apparently they
> aren't worried about it).
> 
> It may also be relevant that Red Hat is a US company, and Canonical
> isn't, and that US law allows software patents, and many other countries
> don't (yet), but IANAL of course.
> 
> poc
> 
> > On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 18:36 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 15:57 -0700, Francis Earl wrote:
> > > > Yes, despite it's legal ramifications... far better to risk your company
> > > > to appease users. It's not like it's not available for Fedora, but Red
> > > > Hat doesn't risk the future of the company on it.
> > > > 
> > > > Google for 'Microsoft billion mp3'
> > > > 
> > > > Mark is rich, but that's about 3 times his worth right there... he isn't
> > > > licensing MP3 or any other codec for his distro, Microsoft just licensed
> > > > it from the wrong people.
> > > > 
> > > > Now wonder consider ffmpeg for instance has Apple codecs, mpg2/4 and
> > > > Microsoft codecs just to name a few, and ask yourself whether it's smart
> > > > to distribute this stuff.
> > > > 
> > > > Only reason he gets away with it is because Ubuntu represents such a low
> > > > market share that it's not worth it today.
> > > 
> > > AFAIK he doesn't "distribute" it (for some meaning of "distribute"),
> > > just makes it easy to get. I may be wrong (and I've no interest in
> > > arguing about it), but I think the Fedora rationale for not doing the
> > > same thing has more to do with avoiding lockin than avoiding lawsuits.
> > > 
> > > poc
> > > 
> > > > On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 18:08 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > > > > On Tue, 2008-04-22 at 14:29 -0700, Francis Earl wrote:
> > > > > > The only real benefits of Ubuntu are proprietary drivers by default, and
> > > > > > easier access to patent encumbered codecs... catering to users so much
> > > > > > is why Ubuntu is so popular... no other reason.
> > > > > 
> > > > > How dare they offer something that users want :-)
> > > > > 
> > > > > poc
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > 
> > 
>