On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 19:23 -0800, Antonio Olivares wrote: > > > and since Red Hat is "releasing"/"has released" > > Fedora > > > on its own, why not have all these things within > > > Fedora. No more trademarks/patents other > > difficulties > > > to get what users want. What is holding Fedora > > Back > > > now? > > ---- > > licensing restrictions - which of course has nothing > > to do with Red > > Hat's involvement or non-involvement with Fedora. > > ---- > > Ok! We can still get all the goodies, no problem a > little bit of work. I can live with that, but other > people want the cake and eat it too. Thank you for > the explanation. I thought that the Fedora Foundation > upon release from Red Hat's grip, would allow for > inclusion of the programs that could not be added > because of licensing issues. ---- If you think about it, the sanctity of open source licenses is far more important than the ease of getting all the goodies installed. Things like flash player, though free are not open source and are available in binary format only which creates an issue if distributed in conjunction with software that is GPL license. Then there are patent issues as Rahul suggested with things like audio and video codecs/formats which could present a sticky wicket for a distribution. If nothing else, it sort of differentiates that which is open source and freely re-distributable and that which is restricted usage, license, patent encumbered, etc. and the reason that you can more easily get these things installed on a proprietary operating system is because you are paying the royalties in the fees ***NVC*** ;-) for information on NVC - or just a bit of tongue in cheek humor...what happens when a Linux user tries to explore a proprietary operating system for the first time... http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/47221/index.html good for amusement on a holiday Craig
