On Wednesday 31 May 2006 21:55, Fergus Wilde wrote:
On Wednesday 31 May 2006 22:04, Darryl Gregorash wrote:
On 31/05/06 06:13, T. Ribbrock wrote:
On Wed, May 31, 2006 at 02:50:50AM -0600, Darryl Gregorash wrote:
My take is different: "...the patient *almost* died, but it was the only way to survive at all". In these days of suing the pants off anyone who even resembles coming close to some odd patent that is hiding somewhere, I think the only way to make Linux' survival safe is to avoid all that non-open crap.
Does this mean you won't be burning any DVDs on that Linux system of yours?
Given that I have no DVD burner, that's an easy one... Are you telling me that *all* DVD burners need binary-only proprietary stuff (aka "blob") to work? A quick google doesn't seem to corroborate that (even Debian seems to support burning DVDs), but maybe you know something I don't?
No, we can restrict the discussion just to pseudo-open source stuff like libdvdcss which, last time I checked, is not available from any site in the USA because it's illegal there -- and it's probably illegal in more jurisdictions than just the USA.
Exactly. And that's your problem. Lawyers and (primarily though by no means exclusively) the US music and film industries in an unholy alliance with big computer corporations. Write to them, stop blaming the Linux developers for having to defend themselves from the anti-democratic intellectual property and software patent industry. It used to be there to protect writers and artists, but that has long since been replaced by protecting semi-monopoly revenue streams for profoundly unpleasant corporations. I would urge US readers to lobby their politicians.
Urging accepted. Jerome
-- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB
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