Ubuntu and.... Linspire???

[seablade]

Uh...

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070208-8801.html

Not real sure I like this. In fact I kinda dislike it at the moment. While I have no problem with making it easy to install free proprietary codecs etc, I kinda agree with the ars author as well. If I was going to give money to linux I would rather give directly to the projects.

Seablade

[bigtrouble77]

There's two competing trains of thought here...
1. I don't want to support the propegation of proprietary codecs because history has told us that the companies who own the rights to these standards will leverage their power for financial gain. Proprietary standards suck.

2. I'd like to actually be able to watch a friggin' dvd without breaking the law. How the hell did the DVD standard even get released as a proprietary technology anyway? The fact that I have to pay to legally decrypt a DVD I just bought for $18 is insane. I also like to watch videos and other media that people send me, and so does about 99% of the population. I can't just reply "please send this video in an open standard so this linux user can view the content".

So at this point it principle vs. convenience. Convenience is always going to win out with the general public. People have proven to pay for anything (how the heck did drm get accepted?) to avoid being inconvenienced. I think linux distros should consider more seriously supporting proprietary software... No one seems to mind that Macs do just that. I'm not comfortable that we're further supporting unreasonable standards and not something like OGG, but that's life I guess.

[abf]

paully don't like that cracker. i mean i am sure that Automatix3 will feature a "remove linspire crapware" option so you can continue to do stuff as you need, but hmm...whats with these partership bombshells...first MS + Novell, and now this?