On Mon, 2007-11-05 at 13:05 -0500, Luis Villa wrote: > I'm not sure if these lines are useful to you, Seth, but there are two > tests for me that make me slightly less uncomfortable with these > plugins than with other things: > > (1) is it low in the stack? if the non-free bit is low in the stack > (e.g., X drivers) you're at the mercy of the vendor- all of your > freedom is at risk if they go away. If the non-free bit is high in the > stack, you still have the majority of your freedom intact if the > non-freedom gets screwed up somehow, and you can more easilly work to > replace it. (Here, the bits are very high in the stack, and very easy > to replace- we'll have free implementations the very day the patents > expire. But of course we should resist moving the dep deeper into the > stack- no system sounds shipped as mp3, for example.) > > (2) does it create non-free data, or merely allow consumption of > external non-free data? If we allow people to bring their stuff with > them (or import it from the non-free world) we're clearly helping them > move towards freedom. If we're helping them create non-free data, > we're in a different boat- that is a step back. (You might argue that > it is two steps forward one step back, but it is still different than > merely helping consume legacy media.) okay, this confuses me a bit. Is the data non-free? I didn't even think that an encrypted pdf is non-free. The data could be free, just the format is not. If you mean does it help the user create non-free formats then I think we should ask ourselves what's the point of the mp3 plugin? I think it's pretty clear - the whole point of the mp3 plugin to help the user interact with the ipod-based world. That, at least to me, means both get-content-from and send-content-to that world. Converting to ogg is not good enough. > > [Tangentially, I feel comfortable saying that mp3 is not > system-critical, but exactly where in the stack flash is is a very > interesting question at this point, given how much of the web depends > on it. And the firefox Fedora ships *tries* to download flash, even if > it fails.] > How about printer drivers? > [Also, tangent: Fedora should definitely use 'legacy media' where ever > possible to describe mp3s and other proprietary formats.] And then when the patents expire we get to say, what? "No longer legacy media"? -sv _______________________________________________ fedora-advisory-board mailing list fedora-advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board
