On Tue, 2006-10-17 at 23:33 -0700, Nathan England wrote:
> This is exactley why Linux is _not_ main stream and probably never will be.
----
your definition of main stream I suppose means dominating the desktop
market. If that's your definition, then it will come in time but perhaps
not in the time table that meets your expectations.
----
> While I understand your altruistic thinking, in reality, people don't care, 
> they just want it to work. I want an efficient desktop that I can manipulate 
> to do what I want it to do. But it irks me when the distro makers tell me I 
> can do whatever I want, but I can't listen to mp3s. That is just rediculous.
----
MP3's are patent encumbered. A distribution that includes mp3 codecs
without paying licensing fees is probably illegal and likely from out of
the country to evade the licensing restrictions.

The concept of open source allows you to install software that may not
have been included in the original bundle.

I agree with you that many people don't care and just want it to work.
They should care though. They should be aware that patent and licensing
restrictions apply. They should be aware of the efforts of some to use
DRM and various laws that impact their usage.
----
> I want my desktop to react the way I want. I want to modify my programs to 
> work the way I want, and I want to listen to my mp3's. I enjoy all my 
> benefits of open source, but sometimes the ideology of GPL followers gets in 
> the way of me actually doing anything productive.
----
I would be interested in you specifically documenting how GPL or the
ideology of GPL followers (your terms) have ever gotten in your
productive way.
----
> So it is wrong to use a proprietary peice of software? Or support a company 
> that makes an awesome application, because they won't give it away?
> It makes no sense to me. 
----
not part of the discussion
----
> Craig, please don't take this as an attack on you, I don't mean that at all, 
> but I want to rant about this because it really does annoy me at times. The 
> distro makers care more about their personal beliefs than what people really 
> want, and that's an OS that works, works well, and does what they want it to.
----
some distributions are committed to open source. Some distributions are
committed to replicate the environment (as best as possible) available
in binary only, proprietary format. Choice of course is always yours.
----
> I enjoy the benefits of the GPL. Some of my code I have GPL'd. I will probably 
> do more in the future. But not because I don't want anyone to use it for 
> profit, but because I learned something from someone else's GPL'd code and I 
> want to return the favor. But when I go to make some money off something, I'm 
> going to use the BSD license, because GPL isn't for promoting open source or 
> free software, it's purpose is to deny anyone from taking something and 
> making more money than Richard Stallman.
----
this conclusion is absurd. Without Richard Stallman, it's highly
unlikely that Linux would be where it is today.

If you write software, you can choose to license and distribute in any
manner you choose. The only encumbrance is that if you incorporate GPL
code, your software must be licensed compatibly. No big deal here.

I only entered the thread to illustrate the point for people that don't
understand why distributions like Fedora & Debian specifically don't
include patent encumbered, non-open source code in the distribution.
They choose not to. It's not only possible but rather easy to install
these items after the original install but it's important that people
should understand why it's not part of their base distribution.

Craig

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