Re: GNOME now

[Brian Cameron <brian cameron oracle com>]

Richard:

On 11/16/12 07:12 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:
>        Tools that use non-free technologies like Skype or
>      Vonage are not just popular, but a requirement for many people who pay
>      for such services.  How many average people would purchase a device
>      that did not support such tools?
>
> Is this a real issue?  On a free operating system, developers can
> implement whatever they wish.  And users can install it if they wish.

Most commercial products that work with video require non-free codecs.
While users may do what they wish, installing free software that
implements non-free codecs may be considered a crime in some places.

> Support for Skype has already been implemented on GNU/Linux.  You
> should never use it, because you would be encouraging someone else to
> use nonfree software.  But as for whether it will be supported, the
> answer is already yes.

I use Solaris, so the fact that it works on GNU/Linux is interesting,
but not helpful.  This illustrates an example of why this is a problem,
I think.

>      But, if the "average user" is the target, how does GNOME plan to
>      provide access to non-free multimedia that the average user tends to
>      access and create?
>
> Companies can implement DRM applications on GNU/Linux if they wish,
> and users can install them -- on a free system, we could not stop them
> if we wanted to.

Not if they were coordinated to act in mass, perhaps.  Licenses to
support technologies like video can be expensive.  While free software
users might pool together resources to develop a solution, there isn't
a good solution today or any organizations or companies paying such
license fees on behalf of free software use.  Aside from Fluendo who I
believe paid a license for MP3 and is freely giving away decoder codecs
for it.  Unfortunatly they don't provide an encoder.

> But we must not do anything that would make us "provide" this nonfree
> software.  That would contradict the principle that we stand for:
> software should be free.

Sure.  I think a real complication is that it is perhaps less clear if
a commercial creative work or art, such as audio or video should be
free in the same sense.  If consumers should expect to be able to
access media with DRM, then the software to support DRM needs to be
licensed for free software use or users cannot legally use it in many
countries.

Some companies may provide GNU/Linux or Solaris non-free driver or
codec solutions, but support is often pretty bad and some programs
only have license to support media in a particular context (such as
a phone call via their client as a paid service).

A perfect solution would be if they just fixed patent law to exclude
free software from needing license to access specific hardware devices,
which is anti-competitive, I think.  Or to at least only make it 
possible to have exclusive control over a device, codec, or technology
for a much shorter period of time.  I'm not sure what the best solution
may be, but I think laws that make it hard, if not impossible, to
deliver things like a free DVD player in OLPC laptops using free
software for children in the developing world is an example of broken
law, IMHO.

Brian