Claudio Freire wrote:
On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 4:56 PM, Per Jessen <per@computer.org> wrote:
I disagree. The decision is a sign of consideration for the openSUSE user. The people on this list have the necessary information for evaluating the risk and avoiding any problems like this, but can you say that for the average user? If you really want to run Adobe Reader, install any suitable flavor of Windows in a Virtual Machine, share your entire Linux disk with that VM, and boot it when you need to process a PDF that okular cannot handle.
Larry, that is just not a viable alternative for the average user to whom we should be catering. To anyone technically able, the lack of acroread will only become a problem when it is no longer available for download or no longer runs on one's distro. I can work with that for my purposes until open-source alternatives have (hopefully) matured sufficiently, but Joe Bloggs and his grandmum cannot. I am repeating myself, but I remain puzzled by the lack of consideration for the openSUSE user, average or otherwise. I sincerely hope we/openSUSE are not turning into an ivory tower.
It's not a lack of concern, it's a lack of power.
Adobe withdrew support. It's their software, their license.
Did they withdraw the license for us/openSUSE to ship it? If we are prematurely withdrawing acroread from the distro, we are showing an utter lack of concern for our users. I presume acroread already has known security holes, but for those average users with a genuine need, surely we should let them chose their poison rather than just take it away. Just like with cigarettes and alcohol, put a big label on acroread saying "dangerous/poisonous/deprecated/unsupported". What's wrong with that?
AppArmor, or a VM even, cannot compensate insecure software. It mitigates, but it does not compensate.
Agree. I don't think anyone suggested otherwise.
So the only alternative left to OSS is the slow and painful one: build support for the missing features on the OS alternatives.
It is most unfortunate that we have not succeeded in this sofar, but it is not a reason to drop our average users in it in the deep end. IMHO. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (13.2°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - dedicated server rental in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org