Easy Fedora 2

[Tony Nelson]

At 4:14 PM -0500 12/1/06, Jesse Keating wrote:
>Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="nextPart2016324.HycaIX8cHJ";
>	protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>On Friday 01 December 2006 16:02, jam at zoidtechnologies.com wrote:
>> a valid point-- however users want these things and if it's "too difficult"
>> to get them installed and operational they will go elsewhere. like the
>> original poster, I applaud the idea of sticking to the guns and not
>> shipping any "grey" content, but that does *not* solve the problem for the
>> vast majority of potential fedora users, and the matter needs to be
>> addressed rather soon if we want to have a serious set of desktop users.
>
>Just how do you expect us to "address" the fact that its illegal?  I'm sorry,
>but we're not just going to ignore the law and hope "The Man" doesn't notice.
 ...

Fairly put.  I have a modest proposal that supports Fedora's principles.

It would help for new users to be shown Fedora's reasoning when they try to
play content that requires a missing (non-free) codec.  On fedora-list, new
users tend to start with questions about how to burn the CDs, then ask
about booting (either their video card or grub), and then ask about not
being able to play certain content ("Why are these useless players even
installed?  They won't play /anything/!").  And only a few novice Fedora
users even find the fedora-list!

I suggest that Fedora-specific patches be added to the standard players, at
least the ones in the Gnome menus, so that when something can't be played
because it requires a missing (non-free) codec, a useful dialog appears,
explaining that there are legal issues that prevent providing the required
codec with a link to a fuller explanation of the issue.  This should work
better than expecting the average user to read and remember the entire
Release Notes.  I know Fedora prefers to push patches upstream, but this is
a special case.  (No, I'm not volunteering, as I don't use or maintain any
of the players and would therefor be little help, and my only benefit would
be seeing fewer plaints on fedora-list.)

If there is a common place where a single patch would affect all players,
that would be better.  I don't think such a place exists, but I'm no expert.

Missing (non-free) firmware is another issue that might have a similar
solution?
-- 
____________________________________________________________________
TonyN.:'    The Great Writ     <mailto:tonynelson at georgeanelson.com>
      '      is no more.             <http://www.georgeanelson.com/>