[Sussex] An interesting article (well I thought so!)

[Steve 'Dobbo' Dobson]

Desmond

On Tue, Sep 18, 2007 at 09:42:13AM +0100, Desmond Armstrong wrote:
> I have never seen any message about legality or otherwise.
> The multi-region part of VLC, libdvdcss2 comes from the 'penquin 
> liberation front'. but the resy of vlc is downloaded from Mandriva. 
> Because I subscribe to Mandriva I can download closed source software 
> from them.

I found this [1] that says that "Win32 and libdvdcss are not installed
with the distribution because of legal issues in some countries" and
then goes on to say that a window pops up to help you install what
is needed.  If this window does point out that there maybe "legal
issues" about you installing the software then I am not impressed.

While I agree that the "legal issues" are hazy and that I have read 
conflicting articles about what the true situation is I feel that 
before doing any action that come with "legal issues" you should be
warned.  The fact that you don't recall such a message suggest to
me that either you or Mandriva have not be as diligent as I would
expect.

> Unfortunately what does come across is that Dell should have installed 
> Ubuntu AND polished up some aspects before releasing to the market, 
> there is no reason why they should not have included some codecs and 
> some closed source software with their product. The long term ideal is 
> that all software should be open source but we must live with some 
> manufacturers software as long as it interfaces correctly.

Not necessarily.  Some codecs my have patent of other restrictions that
would have required Dell to shell out extra money for these to be 
included.  When Microsoft negotiates it does so as the 200lbs gorilla,
and therefore the licensing of those codecs have already been paid.
Is Dell set up to do all this extra work?  I doubt it.

> The computers we are using as a group have the base system installed and 
> we have all done quite a lot of work to optimise our systems and I do 
> appreciate and freely admit that my work in setting up peoples home 
> computers is the result of some considerable experience and a lot of 
> sweat. However I am giving ordinary users a good experience of reliable 
> well installed computers. Clearly there is much work to do before Dell 
> and Lenova computers are working properly at point of sale. And I cannot 
> see why such major manufacturers are apparently not taking their role 
> seriously enough.

Dell is new to the Linux distribution game.  They are trying to see if
this market is worth being in.  They have not got the internal expertise
to get everything right yet, and I'm thinking legal here more than 
technical.  There is more to installing software than just technical
issues, but most people (and I include myself here) don't normally both
with them.

Steve

[1]
http://www.linux.com/articles/44506
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