Fedora - time to blink

[Frantisek Hanzlik]

Tim wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-11-25 at 14:24 -0500, Matt Rose wrote:
>> Ah, and the license restriction canard.  I was actually expecting this
>> one.  If Fedora can't distribute this software because of license
>> restrictions, how come RPMFusion can, and Ubuntu can, and SuSE can,
>> and, and, and.
> 
> Different goals, and others not caring about breaking laws, or not being
> bound by the same laws, not caring about sticking to certain licenses,
> exposing users to patent encumbrances and so on and so forth, versus a
> distro which intends to only include free software.
> 
> The latter one can be very important to some people (whether that be
> developers or users).  If you ever get threatened with a computer
> software audit, you'll have nothing to worry about.
> 
> Some distros run the risk, by including some things, just hoping that
> they'll get away with it.  Others have done deals with the devil, to be
> allowed do so.  Deals which can come back to bite them, later on.
> 
> You're not going to get far arguing that Fedora should do something, if
> it has a goal that it actually should not.  Such removal of things like
> MP3 playback are not casual, nor mere omissions.

License restrictions are one thing, but IMO Fedora did mistakes in
free SW preference too - e.g. in each version of Fedora for several
recent years I had to replace cripled and unmaintained wodim with
original cdrtools, because otherwise I won't able burn CD/DVD media.

Franta Hanzlik