Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 29th Dec 2012 16:37 UTC
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Member since:
2011-04-11
This is another "statement" that is particularly annoying. Not including something because it's illegal under the US and UK laws. See, most Linux distro maintainers are from the US or the UK, and seem to think the world must get shafted the same way they are, as to raise "awareness" for the problems their country has. Seriously, if some country like China bans cryptography (has happened before in more 'democratic' countries), what are the distro maintainers going to do? Remove all cryptography code from Linux, just so they don't get arrested if they ever visit China? Why is the US is more important than, say, China?
No fine folks, the omission of libdvdcss is either the result of a US-centric view of the world, or an effort by the maintainers to raise "awareness". In both cases, a "statement". There is no reason why there shouldn't be an "international" version of Ubuntu with full codecs and libdvdcss. Same for secure boot in most distros. It's all about "awareness". No legal hurdles this time. It's a "statement" again from stuborn maintainers.
BTW, the US authorities haven't issued an arrest warrant for the Mint guys yet...
And libdvdcss might not be exactly illegal in the US... http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/07/23/29099.htm
US, UK, maybe Germany, end-of-list. The Mint guys have no problem shipping it.
I complained, read my first post again about how secure boot sucks. The DRM in DVDs sucks even more. But what are you going to do? You can't "isolate" yourself from the problem by not supporting PCs with secure boot anymore, or by not having DVD playback. This is silly 70s thinking that has been passed by the FSF to many distro developers: See a problem? Isolate yourself from the problem by boycotting stuff. Don't try to workaround the problem. Unfortunately, most people don't think that way, so you are basically isolating yourself (and your distro) from the real world.
Edited 2012-12-29 20:38 UTC