On 04/22/2014 12:15 PM, Nikos Roussos wrote:
There is also a third group, somewhere in between, who believe that's ok to ship Free Software that connects and interops with proprietary services (gtalk, aws, etc), but it's not ok to ship proprietary software, metadata about proprietary software or advertise proprietary services through our main UI tools.
I think there is something completely missing from the discussion: the wishes (expressed in terms of service agreements) of the proprietary service providers. In many cases, these terms require users to access the service through official interfaces only: a web browser, or published APIs (with API keys). The data available over APIs is typically more limited than what is accessible in a web browser (e.g., no content, only metadata, or no write access) and not suitable for a general-purpose client users would want to use. Furthermore, distribution of the API key in free software is problematic as well.
I don't know how serious service providers are about restricting such alternative clients. In the IM market, there have been past efforts which seemed to be designed to block out alternative clients, presumably after they gained sufficient market share.
What I wonder is this: Will these clients work only as long as Fedora is sufficiently unpopular? How will we respond once we are blocked? Where is the Freedom in telling users to access services in ways presumably not approved by the service provider?
(This concern does not apply to showing a website running proprietary software in a web browser, but this is not always what our clients do.)
-- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
