Re: [LUG] Flash Player 9 for PPC

On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 08:48:38PM +0000, Mark Jose wrote:

> I dislike the Microsoft company methods - their ethics if you like.
> Thats the main reason I don't use Windows.

Right, so you don't like their proprietary nature.

No, he dislikes the fact that they use their non-license-related nature to be complete arsewipes to everyone.

> I advocate GNU/Linux to many of the people whose computers I have to clean
> off viruses, worms, trojans. spyware.... but I never had those issues myself
> whilst on Windows.

When you advocate this to them, do you recommend a distro? Which? Do you refer
to it as GNU/Linux? Do you explain what GNU is? Do you explain free software?

I would guess at Ubuntu. Referring to what the common man refers to as Linux as GNU/Linux creates unnecessary complications, especially as the target has zero idea of what an OS is, let alone the difference between its kernel and the rest.

> How many in the wider community would agree with that though Matt?

Not enough.

Perhaps.

> Personally, popularity or otherwise doesn't worry me too much, although of
> course it can be argued that popularity would bring more volunteers to work
> on projects perhaps. But the wider community seem to want converts to the
> GNU/Linux camp.

What's better, more people using a free system or more people using a system
where they install proprietary software? To me, that negates the point of
freedom.

What's better, using Windows with MS Office, MSN Messenger, Photoshop, Freehand, etc or using Linux with Openoffice, Telepathy, GIMP, Inkscape and Macromedia's flash player? It's not like we'd use the proprietary flash player if a viable FLOSS alternative were available - we simply refuse to abandon functionality we want in the sake of freedom. We have the freedom to choose whether to care about freedom; users of Gnuisance don't.

> I would agree that a distro should offer the choice to the user of free or
> non-free software. Whether Ubuntu or whoever should distribute their release
> with non-free programs will doubtless be discussed at length on their mailing
> lists. Perhaps two downloads - one as usual and one with the non-free stuff
> may be a compromise - after all, the non-free programs are always available
> to users already - even in Debian. It would be interesting to see which
> proved the more popular version.

Actually, in Debian you have to add the respository manually, but yes it is
there. I think they should not offer any proprietary software.

Why? You're restricting the user's use of the software if you don't include it in the distro. People who care whether free software is on their system will remove it manually, or not install it. Other people will complain that their wireless doesn't work and they can't find a Flash player.

> I would suspect any distro which refused to allow *any* non-free software to
> be installed would soon lose ground to the rest.

Popularity. That is not the mission of GNU/Linux, that is the mission of XP
and Mac OS X.

It may not be the mission of free software, but open-source software is entirely dependent upon having a wide range of users and developers so that the software can improve. I feel that the actual software is more important than the annoying political agenda that the FSF has tacked onto it.

No, having websites run by other people where people could get non-free
software would be a compromise. Having them run by Debian/Ubuntu is not
acceptable.

Ubuntu is extant in order to provide a user-friendly, featureful OS, which is free where possible but not to the extent of compromising the software included. Users want proprietary software on their systems, in order to do things people do such as use their computers beyond LaTeX or GCC.

> Even with regard to non-free software within my system - such as VMWare - I
> can write documentation on how to install or use the software within a
> distro.

That is damaging to the community and I would ask you not to do that. Also,
you could not run VMWare. If you need to run a proprietary operating system
there are ways to do that without tainting your system.

Proprietary software is not VX gas. It does not need to be accessed only in clean-room biohazard suits.
Would you prefer that people who want to run VMWare (assuming we want to not restrict their ability to do that) cannot do so and so don't wish to contribute to the OSS process? If not, I would ask you not to tell people to not be altruistic simply to push your politics in people's faces.

> Whilst I would like to see all these binaries released under the GPL and
> opened up, it isn't going to happen I suspect. ATI and Nvidia are in direct
> competition and industry secrets are carefully guarded. It will take a while
> before 3d support is sufficiently good enough for me to be able to employ it
> here on my main system.

Actually, I suspect that ATI and Nvidia are infringing on a lot of each
other's patents, and if one of them would release free drivers (and I suspect
it will be ATI, but I have little proof for that) then it could be settled in
court and they'd both able to eventually offer free drivers.

We need to talk about the here and now. Here and now, NVidia and ATi have both not yet released GPL or similar drivers. Here and now, the free alternatives, while excellent in that they actually provide any functionality at all, are entirely inferior and not suitable for serious use with the graphics card, such as doing usery things like games or some of the lovely screensavers that come with GNOME nowadays.

I'd be keen to see a list of stuff you have installed.

I have HP's scanner/printer drivers (not sure whether they're proprietary or not), Macromedia Flash Player 9, the copyrighted data files for OpenTTD (slowly being replaced), the pre-GPL Sun implementation of Java (now free), gstreamer-plugins-multiverse, mplayer, the proprietary nvidia driver, VLC with all its codecs, Skype and anything else that comes bundled with Edgy. You will note that none of these have viable non-multiverse replacements available. I would use such replacements if they existed, but they don't and so I exercise my freedom to use these.