Omega 10 Live CD Beta: Fedora With Added Multimedia

[Rahul Sundaram]

PYROX wrote:
> That is Awsome. I am tired of Having to install all the plugins to let 
> me play my MP3's All we need now is to have GTKPod installed by Default 
> and Fedora Will have alot more users. The MP3 Encoder is open source 
> anyway so why not?

This is a common confusion.  Fedora excludes both proprietary software 
as well as software that is free and open source but has other potential 
issues such as patents. If I may, let me quote myself from the article:

"There is a difference between proprietary software and potentially 
patent encumbered software. The former is a philosophical issue while 
the latter is a legal issue (at least for distributions based in the 
US). Putting them in the same bucket is not appropriate.

Omega does not install proprietary applications or drivers. What it does 
install are codecs and multimedia players, all of them are under free 
and open source software.

To make this distinction clear, rpmfusion has two different repositories 
- free and non-free. When Omega switches to using rpmfusion (livna will 
have a migration path before shutting down), the software components 
installed by default will be from the free repository.

The non-free repository will be available but nothing from there is 
installed out of the box. This is for two reasons. There is a potential 
legal issue with bundling proprietary drivers. There is also the 
technical issue that installing drivers for hardware when it is not 
required causes breakage..."

So the bottom line is that non-free software affects everybody. Patent 
encumbrances are region specific.

Rahul