****Re: Fedora Desktop future- RedHat moves

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 23:36 -0400, max bianco wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:42 PM, Les <hlhowell at pacbell.net> wrote:
> >
> >  On Fri, 2008-04-25 at 13:45 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> >  >   Why should I be interested in a distribution that makes it
> >  > difficult
> >  > for me to make my own choices about whether a license is acceptable
> >  > or
> >  > not? I don't have a problem with downloading my own copy of any
> >  > particular code from any particular place under any conditions that I
> >  > find acceptable.
> >  But that is the problem.  The folks with proprietary want to limit your
> >  use to only the systems they have chosen to support, thus you can end up
> >  with instruments or software that you have purchased that will not run
> >  when the OS changes.  Furthermore their licenses forbid you from reverse
> >  engineering the code to figure out how to make it work some where else,
> >  and the owner of the proprietary OS won't let you do any reverse
> >  engineering legally to figure out how to interface to the software or
> >  hardware he/she/it chooses to no longer support.  Thus you are obsoleted
> >  with no legal recourse.  Those lovely sites where you download such
> >  utilities are often legally not clean to use either, depending upon the
> >  laws that the various entities have seen fit to pass.  Finally your own
> >  documents, code and other encoded data may be unaccessable to you
> >  either, because the formatting, encoding, encryption or compression may
> >  be proprietary and non disclosed with the attendant no reverse
> >  engineering clauses, leaving you without access even to your own
> >  material.
> >
> >  That is why these licenses, and the subject of libre or free software is
> >  important.
> >
> >  Regards,
> >  Les H
> >
> >
> Adobe Flash is something I can't for the life of me figure out why
> anyone would use. You can't kill the adds like you can with gnash and
> it leaves a gaping security hole in everything it touches.
----
flashblock is your friend...don't leave home without it.

Craig