to autodownload or not to autodownload

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Feb 10, 2008 11:37 AM, Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl> wrote:
> This is turning into a word game, the real questions are:
Don't you get it... patents and copyrights...is very much a word game by nature.

> 1) Is offering the user to download non freely redistributable, but freely
>     downloadable content to enhance the users experience acceptable?

Many webpages are freely downloadable by not freely redistributable
content..we let uses do that all the time.  it would be pretty
difficult to do much of anything in terms of web browsing without
access to copyrighted material that was not redistributable.

>
> 2) Is offering the user to download non free, but freely downloadable code to
>     enhance the users experience acceptable?

This project should not take any affirmative action which aids in
downloading non-free executables.  If however an upstream end-user
application project wants to give users a choice between open and
closed plugins for downloading as part of normal user operation, then
we should not disable that technology unless we have cause to do so
because the plugin download technology is preferring the closed
solution over an available open solution.

>
> 3) Is pointing the user to a website where it can buy proprietary code (aka
>     advertising of proprietary code) to enhance the users experience acceptable?

I have no problem with advertising for-pay binaries with access to
open source code, as long as we make an effort to explain why patents
blow.
>
>
> If you don't believe me this are the true questions, lets take vavoom for
> example currently installing the vavoom package does not result in getting a
> playable game, because the current free dataset we have (freedoom) was designed
> for another doom engine derative: prboom. So I could spend some time fixing
> freedoom and / or vavoom to work together and the vavoom and all the included
> .desktop files launching autodownloader to install doom / heretic / hexen
> shareware would all of a sudden be ok?

Shareware to me implies...executables.  If you think of game data as
content, then i wouldn't call it shareware.  Games games games games.
If games are the most troublesome example that matter, then we are
doing pretty good.

We all like the concept of creative commons right? We think its
generally a good idea... even though the non-commerical clauses sort
of rub us the wrong way quite frequently.  We are fine with users
picking up and using CC material with the non-commercial clause.  We
are even fine with giving users a search box for it on
start.fedoraproject.org.  What if doom game data was licensed under CC
by-nc-nd, wouldn't we be okay with users using that..as content?
Certainly the start.fedoraproject.org page default CC search does not
exclude content licensed in this manner.

Here where I draw the line on autodownloader personally. If there is
open data of any quality available, then autodownloader needs to be
designed to give users the choice to use that open data among other
equal choices, and preferably..prefer that open data by making it a
default choice.  Never having actually used the technology in
question, I've no idea if this condition is already satisfied or if it
would need additional work to implement.

-jef