[sf-lug] SF-LUG meets Sunday 3 September 2017

[Bobbie Sellers]

My remarks are at the far end of this message.


On 08/28/2017 05:26 PM, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):
>
>> Not quite what they are saying at the Web page.
> It's funny that you should say that, because I had just carefully read
> (among other things) that exact, speciifc Web page when I wrote that.
>
>> I was reminded of Mandriva which supplied similar proprietary tools
>> and I could have written something similar when I was using it.
> Almost all Linux distributions supply proprietary tools.
>
> As I was saying, proprietary code divides into two categories, those
> codebases that may be freely redistributed and those that for various
> reasons may not.  The latter are bundled, if the licensing terms permit,
> only in per-seat licensed Linux distributions that we used to called
> 'boxed set' distributions such as SUSE Professional, etc.
>
> As it turns out, though, Black Box Enterprise Linux, with or without a
> ~$50/year support contract, omits those and includes only
> _redistributable_ hardware drivers, firmware BLOBs, and A/V codecs --
> which is why the ISOs are freely available for download rather than
> per-seat licensed the way SUSE Profesional was back in the day.
>
>> As a matter of fact at the time I did tell people that I was using
>> Mandriva for very much the same reasons.
>> <http://www.blacklablinux.org/> and to quote:
> Which says what I summarised.
>
>> Now you note that "running programs to watch videos, music and ebooks"
>> can be done without proprietary programs but they are all copyright
>> protected materials which cannot be watched without either special
>> knowledge or those proprietary programs.
> And your point?  PC/Open Systems LLC, chooses to bundle proprietary
> code, and doubtless also code that is proprietary on grounds of patent
> encumbrance despite copyright licensing, for sundry reasons anyway.
> (They also bundle proprietary hardware _drivers_, as mentioned.)
>
>
>> The proprietary programs allow/**//*lega*//*l */decoding of protected
>> materials.
> This doesn't in any way at all differ from what I said.
>
> Anyway, my point was to correct your characterisation, which seemed
> quite surprising when I read it, so I investigated and found it to have
> some factual errors.   You're welcome!
>
>

     You are correct sir and I would have said so a bit earlier but I 
was absorbed in installation
  and configuration problems for several days.

         bliss