to autodownload or not to autodownload

Trond Danielsen trond.danielsen at gmail.com
Fri Feb 8 18:57:59 UTC 2008


On 2/8/08, Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Starting a new thread for the autodownload discussion which has forked of the
> google-earth thread.
>
> [...]
>
> I must say that any complaints about autodownloader before codecbuddy gets
> removed, to me, are nothing short of hypocritical, and therefor will not be
> taken very seriously by me.
>
> Regards,
>
> Hans

In the world of software nothing is only black and white; most of the
stuff we ship will fall into a gray area one way or another. Let me
mention a few.

1. Online-desktop: The world of free software has "fought" proprietary
software for many years, only to partner up with the WWW behemoth that
Google is. The purpose of the online-desktop is to integrate online
services like flickr and Google with the rest of the system. Despite
their public APIs online services are proprietary software just like
Microsoft Office. Should we ban any application that makes it easy to
access such services?

2. Firmware: Oh how I love that my network card works perfectly
immediately after a fresh install, but there is no doubt that it
contradicts the spirit of free sw.

3. Codec buddy: Already mentioned and discussed. But would we allow a
similar solution if Nvidia decided to create a Video Buddy?

Conclusion: I think there are many issues that are far more
controversial than the autodownloader scripts. The effort made by Hans
has made Fedora a great gamers platform, and I do not think many
end-users would understand the rational for removing them if this is
what is the result from this discussion.

Regards,
-- 
Trond Danielsen
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