Hi, On Thu, 2015-05-07 at 23:27 +0300, Elad Alfassa wrote: > I should also point out that this specific third party repo is not a > solution. It's not easy for people to install, it requires prior > knowledge. If a user needs to google search how to make their music > play and follow instructions on some forum, that's a very bad first > impression. If you google how to play mp3 in fedora, the first result > is an askfedora thread, whose first answer talks about gstreamer1 > porting... that's not useful for users. At all. So not only it's a > google search, it's a google search that would land you on pages with > confusing technical terms. Yes, Workstation is for developers, but > you > can't expect every web developer to get familiar with the > architecture > of our multimedia stack just to play their music. I've never understood this argument tbh. Instead of us educating people on *WHY* the codecs aren't provided by Fedora, I see people repeatedly speaking about how not having them in Fedora is a huge deal breaker. While one reason is patents as someone already mentioned, the other is also the philosophy of FOSS - I hope it isn't just about using a free of charge system.. I do understand that having multimedia support is important user wise, and I'm more than happy to spend time trying to educate people - I'm not in favour of any changes that encourage people to install software that is not FOSS. > And even if they do find that repo, they have no way to install it > securely and safely. While rpmfusion packages are signed, the key is > downloaded in the initial setup (when you download the -release RPM) > over plain text, > and the page you download it from is a wiki people can just edit - > and > also served over plain text so someone could modify the instructions > and the links... > > Another point is that this repo does not seem to be fast enough with > security updates, as it is operated by volunteers and doesn't seem to > have a security response team - so it sometimes takes weeks for > critical security fixes to be shipped to users. So, let us help the third party repository become better? Wouldn't that be a good way to go to help our users? > > I don't know how to solve these issues. I know there's a complicated > legal background for all of this, but what I do know is: > 1) People should be able to play music and videos > 2) People shouldn't need to sacrifice their safety to play music and > videos > 3) People shouldn't need to have special knowledge about how their OS > works to perform these basic tasks. 4) People should know what FOSS is about. 5) People should know what intellectual property rights are. I want to reiterate - it's not just the legal liabilities that such software bring to RH, it's also about the philosophy that FOSS is based on. > > And this example is about codecs... drivers are even a bigger mess. > How is a user supposed to download a wifi driver when their wifi is > not working? Keep in mind that many newer laptops don't have an > ehternet port at all. If you have a broadcom wireless chip and no > ethernet port, you'll need a second device, or a second OS, to find > out how to get the driver and how to install it. And if you have a > different OS that already works, and Fedora requires you to either > replace your wifi chip or figure out the magic command lines to > install a driver, why would you make the switch? Again, it completely comes down to lack of awareness - people that have bitten by the broadcom issue (even though broadcom support in the kernel has become much much better recently) know better than to buy broadcom in the future. > Basically, the more time a person needs to spend on learning how to > make your OS work the less they'd want to make the switch. It isn't "making your OS work", it's "installing additional components" - again, if they knew why it had to be done, I'm sure they wouldn't mind doing it once every 13 months (and less if they use fedup which has worked like a charm on my three machines this week :D) I'm completely on board with any movement that aims to educate people on these issues - I'm not on board with any movement about changing our foundations/policies regarding. -- Thanks, Regards, Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD" http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
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