Xmms and RH8

[Craig White]

On Thu, 2002-10-17 at 14:46, der.hans wrote:
> Am 17. Oct, 2002 schwätzte Craig White so:
> 
> > There are 2 issues that RedHat has steadfastly refused to support.
> >
> > Proprietary licensing & lack of full source code.
> 
> Red Hat has shipped many packages for which no source code was available.
> Maybe they feel the Free Software available has reached a point that they no
> longer need to do this.
----
Indeed - I was imprecise. Their standard distributions don't include
anything without the source. I have bought their 'professional' package
which contains proprietary stuff such as Acrobat Reader, JSK, Loki Games
etc. I started with 5.2 (I believe that 6.0 was actually shipping then
but 5.2 came with the book I bought) and so you are much more equipped
to give us history.
----
> 
> > In the event of MP3, I believe that the source code is widely available
> > but companies now have to pay licensing fees to use it. In the case of
> 
> When Red Hat was locking down 8.0 Thompson ( co-holders of the patent ) came
> out with a press release that was interpreted to mean that clients for
> reading mp3 files would have to pay a per client license. Even that doesn't
> conflict with GPL and other Free Software licenses it's almost impossible
> for Red Hat to enforce, thereby making them liable for 'misuse' that would
> occur with their CDs.
> 
----
touche - thanks for the wonderful clarity
----
> > Adobe Acrobat Reader, Nvidia drivers and others, the source code isn't
> > available and thus, none of this is included in the redhat
> > distributions. MP3 was part of earlier distributions but that was before
> > the copyright holder announced a licensing program.
> 
> As I say Red Hat has made plenty of stuff available. I don't see a '3rd
> party' disk ( might only be in the 'pro' package ), but I have one for 6.2
> and 7.0. I believe I also have one for 7.2, but don't have the full set with
> me. Yes, I've PAID for my distributions :).
> 
-----
you are correct about the 'pro' versions including proprietary stuff. I
don't use it anyway. Some are only demo's. They don't support it - it's
like a toss in to justify a higher price.

Craig