On Tue, 2007-05-22 at 15:00 -0500, Dan Smith wrote:
On 5/16/07, Paul W. Frields <stickster(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Feel free to write that script, publish it, and support it on
your own
website. The Fedora Project and its contributors (including
me, a
non-Red Hat person) are passionately devoted to free and open
source
software, and we want our solutions to be supportable in the
sense that
the community has the power to take them apart and build on
them at will
without legal repercussions.
I understand your point of view but have to disagree with you.
[snip]
Linux means the opposite, it is freedom, even if it means
supporting
sometimes backwards standards like Microsoft formats.
You are not saying anything that hasn't been discussed to death on many,
many Fedora mailing lists. Here is the bottom line:
1. Fedora does not ship encumbered stuff, nor do we commit infringement
by pointing to be how to illegally do something;
2. Fedora folks are always looking for changes in the landscape that
allow us to do something different, in a legal and safe way;
3. One reason we do this is to not bite our US-based friends, who are
subject to things such as the DMCA;
4. A main reason we do this is because true software freedom is more
important than illusory freedom;
5. Fedora Documentation works on free and open content that is related
directly to the Fedora distribution of Linux; we only focus on what is
"in Fedora."
So, if we could figure out a *legal and unencumbered* way to, for
example, put up a Website that would upload, convert, and return audio
files (
mp32ogg.org), maybe that could help. Some idea like that.
What is not going to happen anytime soon, aiui, is a Fedora distributed
wizard/client that sits on the desktop and helps people find the way to
play their MP3 files. No matter how many impassioned arguments are
made. The laws are the laws until they are changed or expire.
- Karsten
--
Karsten Wade, 108 Editor ^ Fedora Documentation Project
Sr. Developer Relations Mgr. |
fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
quaid.108.redhat.com | gpg key: AD0E0C41
////////////////////////////////// \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\