Firefox and Java on CentOS 4.1

[mdw1982 at mdw1982.com (Mark Weaver)]

Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 11:39 -0700, Alan Hodgson wrote:
> 
>>On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 08:49:12PM -0400, Mark Weaver wrote:
>>
>>>That just doesn't make sense. while I understand this is the place we 
>>>find ourselves, it doesn't make sense that one OSS platform cannot do a 
>>>simple thing with another OSS platform.
>>
>>Ah, if only Java were OSS.
> 
> 
> Alan has pointed out ... and I will reiterate it, just in case anyone
> doesn't know.
> 
> Java is _NOT_ open source ... and it can not be redistribute with out a
> license from Sun.  We can not distribute it via a free distro.
> 
> MP3 also requires a royalty payment for every player distributed, and
> therefore can not be distribute by CentOS. 
> 
> While I personally am not happy about either of those situations, we
> (The CentOS Project) do follow the laws for distribution of software.
> 

And thats as it should be. Guess I'll need to bone up on what is and 
isn't free software.

-- 
Mark