Re: (OT) gnash vs. flash (was Re: Why does installing gnome ...)
On Wednesday 17 March 2010 20:15:51 Neal Hogan wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 4:44 PM, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
> > Enough DDs are sufficiently practical for there to be a non-free tree,
> > and Christian Marillat does yeoman's work with
> > http://www.debian-multimedia.org/.
>
> <no flames intended>
>
> Ok . . . that's fine, but I'm still curious about the number of
> debian-user@ folks who appreciate or abide by or whatever the
> "Stallman-point-o-view."
>
> P.S. -- . . . and if I'm lucky, why Stallman might not be relevant to
> the linux project.
The Stallman-purist position actually has a significant
practical upside -- it's impossible to pirate free-as-in-freedom
software, which means an admin can give users a free hand on the
systems they work with, and there is almost no danger of my employer
being embarassed by some kind of license violation if they talk
about it on their blog or redistribute it or something. This makes
the sysadmin's job easier.
Steering around the legal issues in commercial software isn't
difficult, usually it boils down to "don't redistribute", but it
can be tricky to police.
That said, I am not myself such a purist -- I have lots of
non-free packages on my various systems.
-- A.
--
Andrew Reid / reidac@bellatlantic.net
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