Non FOSS and Fedora

Fritz Whittington f.whittington at att.net
Tue Jan 13 17:16:29 UTC 2004


On or about 2004-01-13 03:50, Colin Charles whipped out a trusty #2 
pencil and scribbled:

>On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 21:35, Adam Kosmin wrote:
>  
>
>>I'll spell it out for you. By allowing this documentation to exist on
>>fedoranews.org, readers are basically being told "It's ok to use and
>>install non-FOSS software on your computer. In fact, we'll even show you
>>how!".
>>    
>>
Perhaps I'm just a bit dense, but I would think all of us have the right 
to install whatever software we wish on our *personal* computers, 
whether it's FOSS, non-FOSS, or dental FLOSS, it's our decision.  (The 
question of whether the software was obtained legally or not is an 
*entirely* different question, although it might be an important 
question.)  Secondly, since this is an individual right, and since 
people probably have varying opinions on the details of this, I don't 
think trying to convince others to think the same way you think is 
apropriate in a *technical* help mailing list.  There are plenty of 
*-advocacy lists, probably one for FOSS.

So if someone asks how to obtain/install an mp3 codec for mplayer, 
that's a technical question that should get a technical answer.  An 
additional note that in some jurisdictions, a royalty is due to patent 
holders is OK, but a sermon on FOSS is not on topic for this list, IMHO.

Sorry to be so blunt, but if it's a pig, you just have to call it a 
pig.  :-)

-- 
Fritz Whittington
Force without wisdom falls of its own weight. (Horace, Odes)

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