On Thu, 2008-01-03 at 06:50 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: > On Thursday 03 January 2008, Peter Boy wrote: > >Am Sonntag, den 30.12.2007, 12:49 -0600 schrieb Les Mikesell: > >> It would be better if you tried to understand the consequences of this > >> choice instead of blindly defending it. > > > >As with most decisions in real life: most benefits in one dimension have > >drawbacks in others. If I want the freedom of free software, I may have > >to struggle with issues in using non-free software. It is simply a > >matter of choice (and conscious decision). > > > >> > Fedora did not choose "not to be compatible with..." but Fedora choosed > >> > not to include an non-free program (i.e. Sun's Java) > >> > >> They did both. Including or not including isn't the issue. Making it > >> difficult for the user to install his own freely available copy is one > >> problem. > > > >Fedora does not make it specifically difficult. You may install the Sun > >provided Linux rpm, are free to search the Sun bugzilla database why it > >doesn't work out of the box (doesn't work in any Linux distribution, the > >bug report is some years old and Sun choosed not to fix it), install one > >of the suggested workarounds (e.g. edit a shell script > >in /etc/profile.d) and you are ready to go. As with any distributions > >Fedora does only care about software, which is part of its distribution. > >Third party vendors have to care ybout their software. > > > >And don't confuse the Fedora model with RHEL. In RHEL Red Hat takes care > >about Sun java integration and customers have to pay for it. Or the > >former SuSE distribution where SuSE made a different regarding the > >licence issue. > > > >> A whole separate 'jpackage' project has to exist just to fix > >> this problem in the distribution. The problem wouldn't exist if the > >> distribution included a java-*-sun-compat package of perfectly legal > >> symlinks. > > > >You may think of the jpackage distribution as just another workaround > >for the fact that Sun didn't care about Linux compatibility of their > >Linus rpm's. And it is a general purpose workaround, not a Fedora > >specific one. > > > >> The bigger problem is distributing something that is not java compatable > >> but executing it with the java name. Microsoft tried to promote an > >> incompatible program that similarly fit their agenda with the java name > >> and Sun successfully sued them over it. The fedora-shipped not-java > >> program that executes with the java name does just as much damage and > >> shouldn't be named java until it passes the compatibility tests. I'm > >> surprised fedora's legal dept. allowed this abuse of a trademarked name. > > > >The software is not shipped as java, but as gcj (and with some starter > >scripts with the filenama java for compatibility). And in contrast to MS > >the gcj project aimed to full compatibility and the lack thereof was an > >intermediate state during development. All this is quite different. > > > >> > So you can develope (or simply run) against the reference version and > >> > you can test (and support the devel of) the truly free alternative in > >> > parallel. That's the Fedora way. > >> > >> It's not an alternative java until it passes the compatibility test. > > > >You are free, not to use (and just to ignore) it! Remember, you just > >have to use one of the above mentioned alternative ways. > > Here, with a fresh install of x86_64 on my lappy, an about:plugins gives a > long list of IcedTea stuff. > > So I sent FF off to http://www.cnn.com. Clicking on the first video in the > list, it said I needed flash, so I clicked on the download button. Then I > became root and installed it, and restarted FF. It was there in the about > list, so I went back to cnn.com and they all played just fine. > > Now, this thread was saying what about IcedTea? ---- thanks for you analysis but this thread was about java, not flash. what does CNN and flash have to do with java? Absolutely nothing Craig
