ubuntu marketing

Jon Stanley jonstanley at gmail.com
Fri Feb 22 15:50:56 UTC 2008


On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 10:22 AM, Zhukov Pavel <gelios at gmail.com> wrote:

>  why we can't add feature like "one click rpmfusion/livna enable" with
>  message like "caution! non free software"

Because that would be contributory infringement.  We have actual
knowledge that there is software there that is illegal to download in
the US.  We do have codeina/codec-buddy, which offers the opportunity
to download a gratis MP3 plugin and purchase option for various other
encumbered codecs.  Fedora, it's main sponsor being a US company, is
compelled to abide by US law (no matter that we may not agree with
them).

There's been quite the debate whether this is the Right Thing(TM) to
do.  Let's take a step back here, and look at this not from the
perspective of philosophy and our ideals (while those *are*
important), but rather from the perspective of the user.  I click on
some piece of media on my NTFS partition that works just fine under
Windows, and all of a sudden in Linux, it doesn't work anymore!  No
explanation of why not, simply that "you don't have <x>".  Well why
not?  How do I get what is required?  That is where codeina comes in
and does an excellent job.  It tells you that you are using a non-free
format, why that is bad, and what recourse you have if the media is
available in no other formats (buy the Fluendo stuff).

While I am kinda on the fence about using Fedora as an advertising
platform, is it the right thing to do from a *user experience*
perspective?  Absolutely.  And isn't that what we're all about?
Without users, we wouldn't be where we are today.




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