Re: Penguinistas to the bridge, please.

Andy Burns wrote:
Rob wrote:

Penguins will only come of age once the purist penguinistas wake up and
smell the coffee and realise that they have to bundle software that may
not possibly meet the absolute definition of open source with the
distros

I gooved that Ubuntu *did* include tainted stuff like MP3 codecs and closed source drivers and firmware blobs?

<rant mode start>
Deep ends what you mean by include and tainted. Ubuntu seems to classify
things so that they are one of the following:
Free enough to be included on the CD;
In the repositories (of which there are layers, some more free than
others, but the argument is that they can restrict the contents of those
by country if needed);
In independent repositories like Medibuntu e.g. stuff with leftpondian
thought crime restrictions or even stuff like Acrobat Reader and Google
Earth and some codecs where the licence is a bit tight to permit
redistribution on the CD, but does not ban the distribution in certain
other ways and locations.

I don't give a primates if the leftpondians have mad rules about thought
crime which makes stuff tainted for them - I just hope that the sane
world can see that it isn't doing them any gwd and not bring another of
their lame ideas over here. Our cbyvgvpvnaf have not been doing too
well[1901] on that front, so it is a cause for concern. When all this
stuff is designed and made in the far east, where free software is the
norm (even winders...), MS are going to see that their ohfvarff model is
non-viable or just go out of ohfvarff. I wouldn't trust the abstrads if
they made their own penguin distribution thobut, and it would prolly be
free as in worthless anyway.

There are a few other irritations, like VLC being compiled with the DVD
decryption option turned off, but at the end of the day it is free, so
you can fix that while it is legal where you live. Well, I spose you can
if it isn't TAAW. Alternatively, you could use a distribution that takes
a stance on the issue which you agree with. I'm agnostic between many
distributions (a quick count shows 16 distinctly different penguins
here, a couple of devils and a supernova), but often recommend Ubuntu
because it is easier for people who request recommendations as something
to get to grips with as their first linux, while simultaneously having
really solid Debian underpinnings so that if they do discover that there
is a whole computing world out there which MS has been hiding from them,
they already have a large chunk of it sitting on their chamine.

Meanwhile, back at the point, the freedom fundamentalists get an option
to do a completely free install from the Ubuntu CD nowadays, but if you
have any hardware for which there is no really free (cor, baby!) driver,
the free install merely shows you that you obhtug hardware with the cost
of the driver software included, and all you are doing is refusing to
use something you cnvq for. Unless you either avoid such hardware in the
first place, or get a refund for the software bit, your efforts to go
entirely free have failed as you have financially supported the people
who produced the non-free software bundled with your hardware. Anyway,
it is a bit difficult to get a PC with a free BIOS without a lot of
raesing about, and I know of no-one who has managed to get a free BIOS
running who has then gone on to get a refund for the license fee for the
original BIOS on the board. I have never seen a desktop PC motherboard
offered for sale without a BIOS, but then I have never lwked for one.
Maybe I should check what Stallman is using now. No, CBA, pragmatism
wins this battle, but the war is still on. There are some things you
have to have a cut off point for and trust other people to do it right.

I thoroughly approve of the whole idea of free software, but there is no
point in losing the war by fighting battles you can't win just yet. It
is an incremental thing, and MS are right to be scared of it, because
they cannot compete directly with free. They are however highly
experienced in indirect and sick raptor competition, to the extent that
they have been getting away with selling winders with a two thirds or
more cebsvg margin for a long time.
</RMS>

[1901] Shuffles off to prepare acceptance speech for Nobel prize for
understatement 2009.

[*] Unassigned translation footlingnote: USAnians might want to read
"thought crime" as "intellectual property" for some of the above to make
sense in their language/culture - although there are people who would
say it all makes no sense and fine people $mega for downloading an mp3.
Such people don't acknowledge the difference between a business model
and a tyrany, and I diskard them. Oops, looks like rant mode didn't shut
down cleanly.

--
JimP
Some nerves may have been touched in the making of this post.

.

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