to autodownload or not to autodownload

[Christopher Aillon]

On 02/08/2008 12:54 PM, Hans de Goede wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Starting a new thread for the autodownload discussion which has forked 
> of the google-earth thread.
> 
> First of all let say that I understand that autodownloader is a grey 
> area, and as such I'm more then willing to discuss its use and maybe put 
> down some guidelines for its use. For myself I've used as guideline sofar:
> -autodownloader is only for content, and only for content for Free 
> engines /
>  applications.
> 
> I must say however although I understand the greyness and the worries 
> about autodl, I must say I'm currently not much inclined to spend much 
> time defending it.
> 
> Why? Because we also ship the blacker then black, actually automatically 
> downloading closed source code, not content but code! codecbuddy. Not 
> only does it automatically download some gratis closed source code, it 
> even offers the user to buy closed source code, effectively free 
> advertising for commercial closed source! I've kept quiet about this 
> sofar, because I much rather spend time being productive then having 
> discussions, but IMHO this is _not_ acceptable.
> 
> So my stance on autodownloader is simple, next to codecbuddy its 
> brightly shining white, so white it almost hurts the eyes. So if we're 
> going to discuss things like this, lets start with the largest offender 
> and remove codecbuddy!
> 
> If, once codecbuddy has been removed, the conclusion of more discussion 
> will end up that autodownloader is not acceptable too, then so be it. I 
> will gladly sacrifice autodownloader if thats the price to pay to get 
> codecbuddy (as is) removed.
> 
> 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.

I am fine with autodownloader, so long as the game using the data will 
work on some level without non-free data.  Totem will work fine to play 
free data (Vorbis, Theora, etc) without downloading anything.  Firefox 
will continue to work to render web pages without downloading Flash.  As 
long as the game is playable without downloading free data, I'm okay 
with whatever explicit choices the user makes on their own about whether 
to download non-free data (though I wish they wouldn't).  To that end, I 
appreciate the fact that we've gotten many data files licenses changed 
such that they are free and hope this continues.