Connecting to proprietary web services (was Re: F14: what to do about pino / twitter)

[seth vidal]

On Fri, 2010-10-01 at 13:03 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-10-01 at 15:50 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> > On Fri, 2010-10-01 at 14:52 -0400, Colin Walters wrote:
> > > This is definitely scope creeping the discussion here, but I'm coming
> > > round to the viewpoint that Fedora shoudn't ship any application in
> > > the default install whose primary purpose is to connect to proprietary
> > > web services, or at least not ones configured by default to do so.
> > > (All apps are of course free to be in the repositories).
> > > 
> > > This would dovetail nicely with making it not suck to install applications.
> > 
> > I don't think this is a useful direction to take the F14/pino problem
> > into. If we stop installing applications that are useful for users, then
> > the users will go somewhere else. 
> 
> This is the same argument you can make with proprietary hardware
> drivers. Ultimately we've always agreed with the FSF position that
> encouraging the use of proprietary software just makes it less likely
> that free software will be written, so we shouldn't do it.
> 
> The situation here is exactly analogous. If we choose to, say, ship a
> client configured to connect to identi.ca by default instead, we're
> putting our weight behind freedom in a very important area, just as
> important as hardware support.
> 
> I'd say we shouldn't adopt contradictory policies here.

I concur.

-sv