A minor beef

[tim at registriesltd.com.au (Tim Edwards)]

Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> Many Debian-based distros include Java, Multimedia, ProDVD, etc...
> 
> Gentoo gets around some of these by not storing the software on-site,
> although I've found them guilty of redistributing licenses as well as
> source code from their repository they do not have the right to do.

There's nothing necessarily illegal about having Java or Flash.

The Java licence lets you distribute it under certain conditions 
(http://www.java.com/en/download/license.jsp) and Macromedia allows you 
to apply to distribute their software 
(http://www.macromedia.com/licensing/).
I find it hard to believe that Ubuntu, Suse, Mandriva, etc. who all 
distribute Flash and Java packages are illegal. With any of those 
distros, including Ubuntu, you do have to add extra repositories to get 
multimedia codecs and DVD playback - they are not in the main 
repositories. I just don't buy the idea that Centos/RHEL and Debian are 
the only 'legal' distros out there.

-- 
Tim Edwards