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List:       debian-user
Subject:    Re: Debian Project News - December 2nd, 2008
From:       "Boyd Stephen Smith Jr." <bss03 () volumehost ! net>
Date:       2008-12-03 10:00:48
Message-ID: 200812030400.53177.bss03 () volumehost ! net
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On Wednesday 2008 December 03 03:29, Johannes Wiedersich wrote:
> Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> > sense.  I wonder why they were dropped from Debian, is it not able to
> > participate in some of the Fluendo stuff or something else?
>
> They were most likely dropped because 'Debian is 100% free software' and
> some of these multimedia packages are not 100% free. In Debian's
> definition of free software 'free' includes 'free from patents'. 'lame'
> as a particular example may not be distributed in binary form [1], and
> therefore can not be distributed as an official debian package.

I'm good with that.

I thought Ubuntu "main" had similar restrictions to contrib, and that they put 
non-free software in "restricted", with no restrictions on deps either 
direction since both are required to get the official Ubuntu experience (and 
parts of both are on the installation CD).

It would be interesting to see a more direct comparison.  E.g. Debian 
main+contrib+non-free vs. Ubuntu main+restricted and/or Debian main vs. 
Ubuntu main

> For what I can see from [2], Fluendo is commercial software that can not
> be distributed freely, ie. can not be distributed by debian. It's ubuntu
> version is sold from [3].
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME#Patents_and_legal_issues
>
> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluendo
>
> [3]
> http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=244&osCsid=6cd5e6f90
>2059676a87d53bf30e984ee

Odd, I was able to download without even seeing a license on openSuse and, 
IIRC, Ubuntu.  Perhaps there is some sort of "usage restriction" that 
Ubuntu/openSuse don't enforce; I suppose it could be argued that the license 
doesn't have that "usage restriction", the law does, so the software is as 
free as possible.  That's just idle speculation though.
-- 
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.                     ,= ,-_-. =. 
bss03@volumehost.net                      ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy           `-'(. .)`-' 
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