Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: 66.224.246.146]
on July 05, 2008 06:02 PM
Does anyone care? YES.
You could benefit from the education a good review might provide. Understand where your codec concerns and distress about Nvidia drivers being omitted for "lack of space" overlap with some of the greater issues with using Free Software.
This isn't all about being 'freeware'. It's about acknowledging areas where intellectual property, software copyrights and patents, as well as individual freedom bump up against each other.
Those movie trailers and such that you enjoy so much are intellectual property of the media companies that produce them. Understand the relationship between the service provider, the consumer, and the enabler of these technologies. There is an underlying profit (monetary and IP) motive that can be a useful "thread" to follow to help understand this aspect of using "Free Software". It's not an equal playing field. Codecs are a prime example. Take a look at the Unisys patents on GIF, and Frauenhoffer's patents on MP3, and take a look at what patent infringement and copyright protection mean to a corporate entity. They must enforce their copyrights or they stand to lose them.
Proprietary software's mode of operation suggests that once written, the owner has certain entitlements with regard to generating revenue, and protecting/monetizing access to the concepts that are executed through said proprietary code. This is why GNU is not UNIX.
Finally, out of the millions of GNU/Linux users in the world that *do* modify code, how many contribute their code changes to the parent branches? Not as many as should, I'll grant you that. However, not all modifications that are made are worthy of upstream inclusion. They are incredibly valuable, nonetheless, and are a major reason why Free Software has put major proprietary outfits six-feet under, and allowed the development of things you love like YouTube, Google, etc.
Want to be revolutionary? Include proprietary codecs in your own distribution and understand the hows and whys.
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Re: Kernel Version???
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 66.224.246.146] on July 05, 2008 06:02 PMYou could benefit from the education a good review might provide. Understand where your codec concerns and distress about Nvidia drivers being omitted for "lack of space" overlap with some of the greater issues with using Free Software.
This isn't all about being 'freeware'. It's about acknowledging areas where intellectual property, software copyrights and patents, as well as individual freedom bump up against each other.
Those movie trailers and such that you enjoy so much are intellectual property of the media companies that produce them. Understand the relationship between the service provider, the consumer, and the enabler of these technologies. There is an underlying profit (monetary and IP) motive that can be a useful "thread" to follow to help understand this aspect of using "Free Software". It's not an equal playing field. Codecs are a prime example. Take a look at the Unisys patents on GIF, and Frauenhoffer's patents on MP3, and take a look at what patent infringement and copyright protection mean to a corporate entity. They must enforce their copyrights or they stand to lose them.
Proprietary software's mode of operation suggests that once written, the owner has certain entitlements with regard to generating revenue, and protecting/monetizing access to the concepts that are executed through said proprietary code. This is why GNU is not UNIX.
Finally, out of the millions of GNU/Linux users in the world that *do* modify code, how many contribute their code changes to the parent branches? Not as many as should, I'll grant you that. However, not all modifications that are made are worthy of upstream inclusion. They are incredibly valuable, nonetheless, and are a major reason why Free Software has put major proprietary outfits six-feet under, and allowed the development of things you love like YouTube, Google, etc.
Want to be revolutionary? Include proprietary codecs in your own distribution and understand the hows and whys.
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