On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:42 PM, Les <hlhowell@xxxxxxxxxxx> 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. Max -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list